National writing grant winner has first book published

Las Cruces author Sandra Marshall has completed her first novel, “Death in the Time of Pancho Villa,” which was released Aug. 25 by Best Level Books. She received the nonprofit Malice Domestic’s 2018 William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers because of the high quality of the manuscript that became the book.

The book, Marshall said, is “a historical mystery combining suspense and humor.”

Marshall was raised in Texas. She holds degrees in anthropology and public history and had an extended career as an archaeologist and architectural historian, primarily in the American Southwest. Now a writer and photographer, she has settled in southern New Mexico with her husband, historian George Matthews, and tabby cat, Fog. She is a proud member of Sisters in Crime, Guppy and Croak and Dagger Chapters.

“I’ve always written, even as a kid,” Marshall said. She is a native New Yorker who came to Las Cruces nearly a decade ago. She worked for the New Mexico Department of Transportation in Santa Fe for 12 years before moving to Las Cruces to return to school and earn her masters’ degree in public history with an emphasis in architectural history at NMSU. Marshall co-authored “Historic Architectural Styles, Las Cruces, N.M.: Celebrating 150 Years,” with John R. Versluis, which was published in 2000.

Marshall had also done technical writing as part of her career as an archeologist, but said she never imagined writing fiction. She began thinking about writing a mystery while on a research project for the National Park Service in California.

The book’s title was suggested by Beth O’Leary, with whom Marshall serves on the City of Las Cruces Historic Preservation Commission. Marshall was voted chair of the commission by its members earlier this month. She also got writing guidance from award-winning author Denise Chavez of Las Cruces.

Marshall’s favorite mystery writer is Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957). She also likes the works of historian and biographer Sir Simon Schama (1945-).

Contact Marshall at slmarshallphotography@gmail.com.

Here is an excerpt from “Death in the Time of Pancho Villa”:

“The in-laws were aghast when Rose Westmoreland boarded the train alone, bound for the far edge of the country, to find her missing husband. Unthinkable in 1911. Now she’s in El Paso, a city holding its breath, anticipating a spectacle. A decisive battle of the Mexican Revolution is about to erupt right across the Rio Grande. Husband Leonard, sent there by his employer Stoneman Petroleum, apparently first went native, then disappeared, leaving behind a fiery rebel mistress and rumors he was sent to offer the rebels money in exchange for favorable drilling rights.

“Alone in this liminal place, Rose is befriended by two women, a retired thespian and a young Mexican expatriate, who suggest coping methods that would throw the folks back in Shaker Heights into a tizzy. A reporter recruits Rose, who is a talented amateur photographer, to immortalize the Mexican leaders: a sardonic, strawberry soda-sipping Pancho Villa and visionary Francisco Madero, who communes with the shades of Napoleon and Beníto Juárez.

“Rose is caught up in the intrigues of the Revolution, the unfamiliar culture of the borderlands, and the deadly competition between international oil companies. When the only person to offer real information is killed by what is, perhaps, a stray bullet, she finds her own life in danger. While victory is celebrated across the river, Rose learns the truth about Leonard. But where one door closes, another opens, and on the border, there are many doors.”