A record of oral histories about the now-forgotten town of Pilares, N. M. , U. S. A. , mostly pertaining to the period when Pancho Villa and his revolutionaries attacked and burned- to-the-ground the town of Columbus, N. M.. Joyce Means was no storyteller, but she made up in reseach what she lacked in prose. It's a difficult book to read in one sitting, but it serves well as a sort of almanac and is best approached that way, in my opinion.