Valley of the Guns
The Pleasant Valley War and the Trauma of Violence
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Valley of the Guns
Buy Now for $26.99
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Narrated by:
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Peter Lerman
About this listen
In the late 1880s, Pleasant Valley, Arizona, descended into a nightmare of violence, murder, and mayhem. By the time the Pleasant Valley War was over, 18 men were dead, four were wounded, and one was missing, never to be found. Valley of the Guns explores the reasons for the violence that engulfed the settlement, turning neighbors, families, and friends against one another.
In this audiobook, author Eduardo Obregón Pagán explores how geography and demographics aligned to create an unstable settlement subject to the constant threat of Apache raids. 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.
Drawing from history, geography, cultural studies, and trauma studies, Pagán uses the story of Pleasant Valley to demonstrate a new way of looking at the settlement of the West. 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.
©2018 University of Oklahoma Press (P)2019 Redwood AudiobooksCritic Reviews
"Add Valley of the Guns to the short list of key works on the violent ordeals that made the American West." (Stephen Aron, author of How the West Was Lost)
"This important revisionist work advances our understanding of western violence...." (Brian Cannon, author of Reopening the Frontier)