SONGS OF THE FLUTEPLAYER: Seasons of Life...

SONGS OF THE FLUTEPLAYER: Seasons of Life in the Southwest by Sharman Apt Russell (Addison-Wesley: $8.95). When Sharman Russell and her husband moved to a remote corner of the Mimbres River valley in New Mexico, they expected to enjoy a Southwestern version of a Thoreauvian idyll. They soon discovered that in a desert there’s invariably either too little or too much water. The unusually intense flash floods that swept away their car demonstrated that their riverfront property may not have been the prime real estate they anticipated, and their dreams of an organic garden-cum-orchard foundered in the complex regulations governing water rights. Taking Kokopelli, the sly, hunchbacked flute player who appears on Southwestern pottery and petroglyphs, as a sort of role model, Russell celebrates the flowers and thorns of her chosen home, although her best writing focuses on the rewards and inconveniences of daily life there.