In the late 1880s, Pleasant Valley, Arizona, descended into a nightmare of violence, murder, and mayhem.
Writing in a vivid narrative style and employing rigorous scholarship, he creatively explores the role of Trauma in shaping the lives and decisions of the settlers in Pleasant Valley and offers new insight into the difficulties of survival in an isolated frontier community..
Drawing from history, geography, cultural studies, and Trauma studies, Pag n uses the story of Pleasant Valley to demonstrate a new way of looking at the settlement of the West.
The combination of unrelenting danger, its accompanying stress, and an abundance of firearms proved deadly.
In addition, territorial law enforcement officers were outsiders to the community and approached every suspect fully armed and ready to shoot.
Mixed-race property owners found themselves fighting white cowboys to keep their land.
As the forces of progress strained natural resources, conflict grew between local ranchers and cowboys hired by ranching corporations.
The fear of surprise attack by day and the theft of livestock by night prompted settlers to shape their lives around the expectation of sudden violence.
In this book, author Eduardo Obreg n Pag n explores how geography and demographics aligned to create an unstable settlement subject to the constant threat of Apache raids.
While popular historians and novelists have long been captivated by the story, the Pleasant Valley War has more recently attracted the attention of scholars interested in examining the underlying causes of western violence.
Valley of the Guns explores the reasons for the Violence that engulfed the settlement, turning neighbors, families, and friends against one another.
By the time the Pleasant Valley War was over, eighteen men were dead, four were wounded, and one was missing, never to be found.
In the late 1880s, Pleasant Valley, Arizona, descended into a nightmare of violence, murder, and mayhem
