Lives of Arizonans From Memoirs and Fiction

Arizona pioneers tell their stories in diaries, letters, and memoirs. Martha Summerhayes’s beloved Vanished Arizona and Captain John Bourke’s On the Border with Crook, plus biographies of Hopi, Pima, and Tohono O’odham women describe their lives and feelings. But we’ll also look at fiction, including Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, Zane Gray’s Riders of the Purple Sage, and contemporary authors like Marguerite Noble’s Filaree and Nancy Turner’s These is My Words. Richly illustrated with historic photographs and artwork, this presentation gives audiences a personal understanding of what life was like for Native Americans and pioneer emigrants.

Presenter: Jim Turner

Before retiring from the Arizona Historical Society, Jim Turner worked with more than 70 museums across the state. He co-authored the 4th-grade textbook The Arizona Story, and his pictorial history, Arizona: Celebration of the Grand Canyon State, was a 2012 Southwest Books of the Year selection. Jim moved to Tucson in 1951, earned a M.A. in U.S. history in 1999, and has been presenting Arizona history for more than forty years. Jim is an author/editor for Rio Nuevo Publishers, author of The Mighty Colorado from the Glaciers to the Gulf and Four Corners USA: Wonders of the American Southwest.