The Landlady

About the Book

Artists need silence and solitude.  Mary Harper seeks both when she moves into a big Victorian house in an old Spanish town on the edge of the high prairies at the foot of the southern Rockies.  Her children grown, her marriage over, she has fallen in love with New Mexico's astonishing horizons.  She intends to devote the rest of her life to fulfilling her talents, but how can her pictures compare to the ancient mountains and endless skies around her?  A dwindling income forces her to compromise her privacy by taking in boarders -- a revisionist historian, a paranoid widow, and an inept graduate student -- who draw her against her will into their problems.  She hires José Ramon Ignaccio CdeBaca McGarrity as a handyman but finds out he is far more than he seems.  When silver-haired Miriam appears on her door step, sparkling in the snow like an angel, Mary's choices and doubts multiply, threatening her passion to paint.  In a harsh and indifferent country, she must decide between compassion and creativity.  As much about a place as the efforts of an artist, THE LANDLADY paints in words the uniqueness of northern New Mexico that has inspired many writers and artists.

About the Author

J.N. Hyatt, grandmother of four, has lived in New Jersey and Indiana but now lives in New Mexico, connected to her children and grandchildren by phone, plane, and train when she is not writing or painting. In addition to short stories, she has published a novel about an artist moving to New Mexico entitled THE LANDLADY: LESSONS FROM A COYOTE.