By embracing the full storytelling and archetypal potential of the American Southwest, Frank Waters wrote some of the finest literature of the 20 th century. Through his 28 volumes of fiction and non-fiction, including Book of the Hopi and The Man Who Killed the Deer , Waters' achievement as both a novelist and a philosopher is comparable to Hermann Hesse, John Steinbeck, and Terry Tempest Williams, a rare accomplishment in the literary world. As James Thomas, editor of Best of the West , states: "Waters is now ... on the cutting edge of just about everything we take seriously in this country: the natural environment, our socio-psychological environment ..., our political relationship with the past, and our political, ecological, and spiritual relationship with the future." The Emergence of Frank Waters : A Critical Reader serves as an essential introduction to Frank Waters' life, work, and sociocultural contexts for scholars and general readers alike. In its 23 essays, this volume thoroughly explores Waters's visionary novels and non-fiction books, writings that are vital to understanding our transformational times. Born on July 25 th , 1902, in Colorado Springs, Frank Waters began his twenty-eight book career in 1930 with The Lizard Woman , a novel set on the Mexican border. For the next six decades, he would go on to write many classics of fiction and non-fiction, including The Man Who Killed the Deer (1942), Masked Gods (1950), Book of the Hopi (1963), Pike's Peak (1971), and Mountain Dialogues (1981). Along the way, Waters engineered the first phone lines across the Mojave, wrote film scripts for Hollywood, edited a bilingual newspaper in New Mexico, penned public relations releases for Nevada's nuclear test range, and taught university level creative writing classes in Colorado. Waters received numerous honors in his lifetime, including the New Mexico Arts Commission Award for Achievement and Excellence in Literature, seven honorary doctorates, and the declaration of "Frank Waters Day" by New Mexico Governor Bruce King in 1993. Frank Waters died in his home in Arroyo Seco, New Mexico on June 3, The Emergence of Frank Waters: A Critical Reader Edited by Alexander Blackburn and John Nizalowski Irie Books (2020, 311 pp.) Frank Waters (1902-1995) was among the first wave of Anglo writers (born in Colorado Springs, his grandfather was part Cheyenne) to choose Taos, and New Mexico, as a spiritual Indigenous center that would eventually prove mankind's redemption in the wake of worldwide war and genocide. Two scholars offer a compendium of studies on the extensive body of work of this foundational Southwestern author, who made his home mostly in and around Taos since 1937 and whose novels, philosophy and histories explore the mystical, unknowable properties of the region and its people, from authentic Native portrayals in "The Man Who Killed the Deer" (1942) to his sojourn among the Hopi in "Book of the Hopi" (1972) to his memoir, "Of Time and Change" (1998). An engineer by reluctant profession, Waters worked variously as a junior engineer for Pacific Bell Telephone Company in Imperial Valley, California, in the 1930s, when he wrote his first novels, and an information specialist in the 1950s with the Atomic Energy Commission in Los Alamos, where he witnessed dozens of atomic bomb tests. In one essay here, Vine Deloria, Jr., calls him a prophet and explorer. Unlike his contemporaries, Waters did not head off to become a European ex-pat writer, but found his rich vein of literary ore in the Southwest he knew and loved. From the Taos News/ February 24, 2021 This compendium of Frank Waters visionary literary legacy by a stellar selection of writers, scholars and critics, joyously explores the work of the man who has been called the godfather of Southwestern writing. Often hailed as the greatest unknown writer in America--despite numerous nominations for the Nobel Prize-this appreciation should go a long way toward advancing the recognition of his place in the pantheon of the world's great writers. --Alan Louis Kishbaugh Author of DEEP WATERS : Frank Waters Remembered in Letters and Commentary "In this world of profound contradiction and dualism, where we seem to live in the realms of either extinction or salvation, Frank Waters' novels and nonfiction are prescient explorations into the nobility of the human spirit -- what poet Gregory Corso referred to as "heirlooms for the future," that is, sacred objects or writings of special value handed down from one generation to another. The Man Who Killed the Deer and Masked Gods are justifiably revered for that reason. Alex Blackburn and fellow writer John Nizalowski are inspired guiding lights for this remarkable American journey." John Macker, author of Atlas of Wolves "Put aside Hemingway and Fitzgerald in Paris, and look instead to the modernisms of the American West-Neihardt at Pine Ridge, Jeffers in California, Austin