A Garlic Testament [Stanley Crawford]

[Garlic] [New Mexico] [Peaceful Life]

A Garlic Testament

Stanley Crawford

UNM Press, New Mexico. 1998. First paperback edition. Slight yellowing to text block, quite nice otherwise. Excellent.

Stanley Crawford is most well known for the brilliant "Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine"; a beautiful parable of the isolation of married life. Pick up a copy at Dalkey if you dare...it really is a masterwork. 

From there though, I became very interested in what Mr. Crawford was up to later in life, and lo and behold, he was running a quiet garlic farm in northern New Mexico alongside his wife. He had a writers retreat/fancy AirBNB on-site, a tower you could escape to and lose yourself in the infinite blue of the NM sky. I thought about going for years. I never did it. Crawford passed away at the healthy age of 86 this year in Dixon, NM. What a life. What a writer. This book is just as it sounds - a testament to his garlic empire.