front cover of The Basque Hotel
The Basque Hotel
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1993
This novel is the first volume in Laxalt's highly acclaimed Basque-family trilogy. It tells the story of Pete, the son of a Basque immigrant, and his coming of age in Depression-era Carson City. Pete’s immigrant parents run the Basque Hotel, bed and meals, whiskey and wine in Prohibition time for sheepherders and town characters. Pete is indifferent to his heritage except for disquiet about his parents’ ignorance of such American traditions as Christmas trees. Pete, too prone to dreams, undergoes his rites of passage—cruelty and kindness, disillusionment, love and terror, pathos and hilarious adventure, and finally, a cautious understanding of his world.
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Child of the Holy Ghost
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1997
The second installment in Laxalt's Basque-family trilogy, this novel takes an adult-aged Pete to the Basque Country to uncover his parents' secret reasons for immigrating to the U.S. Pete finds himself stepping back into a medieval morality, into the rigid and unrelenting code of his ancestors, older and stronger than reason. Denied by his own blood kin, cold anger forges his determination to pierce the silence of the villagers and learn the circumstances of Maitia’s, his mother’s birth. One by one, the ghosts rise up, piecing together the story of Maitia’s shame and her resolve to gain the respect that could only be found in America. Interwoven is the story of Petya, Pete’s father, forced to flee the high Pyrenees by accident and find a new life as a lonely sheepherder in the northern deserts of Nevada. His struggles with loneliness and the temptations of emerging manhood provide a background for the stark reality of a young immigrant whose pain and growing sense of self-determination transform him into the essential being we know as American.
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A Cup of Tea in Pamplona
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1993
In this slim tale, Laxalt shows the ugly, desperate, and sometimes violent world of the contrabandiers, Basque smugglers in the Pyrenees. Set in the 1960s, the terse story begins with Nikolas, driven by his family’s financial despair, taking on work from Gregorio, the patrón of a small team of smugglers. Nikolas must smuggle fifty horses over the mountain ridges between France and Spain. If he’s caught, jail and ruin are certain; death is possible. This engrossing novella, told with tight narration and compelling dialogue, shows the grinding poverty and ethnic tensions in Basque lands, fifty years ago. 
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Dust Devils
A Novella
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1997
An action-packed story set during the violent and conflict-ridden days of the early 20th century, Dust Devils takes place in the rugged mountains and deserts of Eastern California and Northern Nevada. Ira Hamilton, the teenage son of rugged Indian-hating rancher John D. Hamilton, wins the bronc-riding competition at a local rodeo and comes away with a special prize: a beautiful Arabian colt. But the horse is soon stolen by Hawkeye, a notorious local rustler. Accompanied by Cricket, a young Paiute who has been his closest companion since infancy, Ira vows to retrieve his prize. On the way, Ira must find the courage to overcome the challenges of nature and outlaw, and to love the woman of his choice. This vivid tale will thrill readers with its authentic depiction of Nevada's lonely back country, its hardy ranchers, and its native peoples. Ira Hamilton's adventure shows us the last days of the Old West, when cowboys, sheepmen, and Indians still struggled to survive and overcome their long-standing animosities, and violent men rode boldly and unhindered across the harsh landscape.
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Governor's Mansion, The
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1997
In the dramatic third volume of Robert Laxalt’s trilogy, Leon—the eldest son of immigrant parents—becomes the governor of Nevada during the 1960s. An able lawyer in his own right, he is a neophyte when it comes to dealing with the political ploys of the entrenched officeholders who dominate in Nevada. Leon faces the crisis of his budding political career when he is caught between J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, bent on cleaning out the Mafia, and his own need to protect the autonomy of his native state. An unexpected ally appears when the only man rich enough to solve the governor’s dilemma comes to Nevada—reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes.
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In a Hundred Graves
A Basque Portrait
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 2016

The Basques of Europe are legendary for the curtain of privacy they have always drawn around their world, shielding it from visitors from the outside. As a result, accounts of the inner workings of Basque village life are almost nonexistent. In this unique book, author Robert Laxalt has managed to penetrate the deep reserve of Basque village folk. Shepherds, troubadours, merchants, and smugglers, caught up in the panorama of daily life, parade before the reader. They are portrayed against a backdrop of green rugged mountains and stone buildings, typical of the Basque provinces in France and Spain. Laxalt, an American born of Basque parents, unveils the Basque character with warmth, wry humor, and above all, honesty. 

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The Land of My Fathers
A Son's Return to the Basque Country
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 2024

In 1960, renowned Nevada writer Robert Laxalt moved himself and his family to a small Basque village in the French Pyrenees. The son of Basque emigrants, Laxalt wanted to learn as much as he could about the ancient and mysterious people from which he was descended and about the country from which his parents came. Thanks to his Basque surname and a wide network of family connections, Laxalt was able to penetrate the traditional reserve of the Basques in a way that outsiders rarely can. In the process, he gained rare insight into the nature of the Basques and the isolated, beautiful mountain world where they have lived for uncounted centuries. Based on Laxalt’s personal journals of this and a later sojourn in 1965, The Land of My Fathers is a moving record of a people and their homeland. Through Laxalt’s perceptive eyes and his wife Joyce’s photographs, we observe the Basques’ market days and festivals, join their dove hunts and harvests, share their humor and history, their deep sense of nationalism, their abiding pride in their culture and their homes, and discover the profound sources of the Basques’ strength and their endurance as a people. Photography by Joyce Laxalt.

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front cover of A Lean Year and Other Stories
A Lean Year and Other Stories
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1994
In this collection of sixteen short stories, Robert Laxalt illuminates the Nevada of the 1950s. Written when Laxalt was in his twenties, the stories are as fresh as if they were penned yesterday. Humanity good and bad, humor and cruelty, satire and adventure are found in these early stories of a Nevada poised on the brink of change.

In the lead story, Cowboy Clint Hamilton laments that the town is “getting more like a big city every day” as the traditional gambling joints of earlier times give way to the gaudy casinos that will soon become modern glitz.

Sobering experiences from his days as a reporter give Laxalt an insight into murderers and prison life and lethal gas chambers. In a chilling short story, “The Snake Pen,” we find the seed of Robert Laxalt’s celebrated novel, A Man In the Wheatfield.

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front cover of A Man in the Wheatfield
A Man in the Wheatfield
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 2002
Set in a small Nevada town of Italian immigrants, this allegorical tale illustrates the human traits of evil and fear. Laxalt relays his shocking story simply and concisely. Father Savio Lazzaroni is obsessed with a vision of evil. Mayor Manuel Cafferata is only concerned with his own standing in a tiny village peopled with Italian immigrants. Into their isolated town comes Smale Calder, the first outsider to set up business in the tightly knit society. The events that befall these three men and the villagers reveal the chilling ways in which people deal with fear and prejudice. When Calder’s secret passion for rattlesnakes is discovered, the lives of all involved are changed in a dramatic sequence of emotions and events. Laxalt’s quiet buildup of suspense and violence will sneak up on readers and leave them questioning the meaning of good and innocence. One of the best works written in the West, this novella was honored alongside Hemingway and Bellow upon its first release in 1964.
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front cover of Nevada
Nevada
A History
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1991
An evocative portrait of the state that "didn't deserve to be" but became one anyway. First published in 1977, this edition includes a new preface that reexamines Laxalt's predictions for Nevada made almost 20 years ago and reflects on the changes that have occurred in the state: the urban plight of Las Vegas and Reno, the renewed appreciation of the land by conservationists and opportunists, and the explosive growth of tourism and gaming.
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A Private War
An American Code Officer in the Belgian Congo
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 1998

In this vivid memoir, Laxalt recalls his service during WWII as a code officer in the Belgian Congo. In this remote jungle outpost, a secret war was being fought for control of the world’s future. Deep in the Congo lay a mine that produced a little-known substance called uranium, and for reasons no one then understood, the Allies and the Germans were struggling ferociously to control this mine and its ore. The cloth edition is a limited numbered, signed edition.

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Sweet Promised Land, 40th Anniversary
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 2007
How long has it been since you fell in love with a book?

Dominique Laxalt was sixteen when he left the French Pyrenees for America. He became a sheepherder in the Nevada desert and nearby hills of the Sierra. Like all his fellow Basque immigrants, Dominique dreamed of someday returning to the land of his beginnings. Most Basques never made the journey back, but Dominique finally did return for a visit with family and friends. Sweet Promised Land is the story of that trip, told by his son Robert, who accompanied him to the pastoral mountain village of Tardets in France. Dominique came home victorious, the adventurer who had conquered the unknown and found his fortune in the New World. He told of his life in America, the hardships and challenges, and began to realize that he had changed since his departure from Tardets. By the end of the visit, he knew with certainty where he belonged.

During the past fifty years, this book has become a classic in Western American literature, still beloved by the Basque-American community. In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication, western literature scholar Ann Ronald wrote a new foreword, discussing the book in the context of American and Nevada literature.
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front cover of Sweet Promised Land, 50th ed.
Sweet Promised Land, 50th ed.
Robert Laxalt
University of Nevada Press, 2007
How long has it been since you fell in love with a book?

Dominique Laxalt was sixteen when he left the French Pyrenees for America. He became a sheepherder in the Nevada desert and nearby hills of the Sierra. Like all his fellow Basque immigrants, Dominique dreamed of someday returning to the land of his beginnings. Most Basques never made the journey back, but Dominique finally did return for a visit with family and friends. Sweet Promised Land is the story of that trip, told by his son Robert, who accompanied him to the pastoral mountain village of Tardets in France. Dominique came home victorious, the adventurer who had conquered the unknown and found his fortune in the New World. He told of his life in America, the hardships and challenges, and began to realize that he had changed since his departure from Tardets. By the end of the visit, he knew with certainty where he belonged.

During the past fifty years, this book has become a classic in Western American literature, still beloved by the Basque-American community. In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication, western literature scholar Ann Ronald wrote a new foreword, discussing the book in the context of American and Nevada literature.
[more]


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