Peggy Pond Church's The House at Otowi Bridge tells the story of Edith Warner, who for some twenty years ran a small tearoom by the bridge over the Rio Grande below Los Alamos, where she became a friend to the people of San Ildefonso Pueblo and, during the Manhattan Project, a quiet refuge for scientists including Niels Bohr and Robert Oppenheimer. Church, a native New Mexican poet who herself lived at Los Alamos, drew portions of the book from work that won the 1959 Longview Literary Award, and her telling, praised by Oliver La Farge as "a finely told tale of a strange land," weaves Warner's life together with her Pueblo neighbor Tilano and the plateau country.
This is the University of New Mexico Press reissue carrying the 1987 copyright by Church's heirs over the 1959-60 original, with Connie Fox Boyd's drawings and a cover illustration by Katherine Potter. It remains one of the essential New Mexico books, a literary bridge between Pueblo life and the atomic age.
1987 reissue of the 1959 first
The copyright page carries 1959, 1960, and 1987 dates — a later paperback reissue of Church's 1959 classic. This is a University of New Mexico Press book; see how University of New Mexico Press states its first printings.
| Author | Peggy Pond Church |
| Publisher | University of New Mexico Press |
| Year | 1987 |
| ISBN | 0-8263-0281-5 |
| Edition | 1987 reissue of the 1959 first |
| Condition | Softcover, clean. |
| Topic | New Mexico history (Los Alamos / San Ildefonso) |
Photographs © New Mexico Literacy Project, licensed CC BY 4.0 — reuse with attribution. This is an identification and provenance record of a real donation; no appraisal or valuation is offered.
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