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Edited by Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita. Houston: Arte Público Press, 647 pp. $17.95 paper.
Since Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita's 1993 and 1995 republications of The Squatter and the Don (1885) and Who Would Have Thought It? (1872), María Amparo Ruiz de Burton has become a key figure in the recovery of nineteenth-century Mexican American literature specifically and the reconfiguration of nineteenth-century American literary culture more generally. The success of these two novels has encouraged efforts to locate other Ruiz de Burton writings. As a result, Sánchez and Pita now present a compendium of Ruiz de Burton's personal correspondence. Included in the collection are over 150 letters by Ruiz de Burton and over 25 letters by important historical figures of the time who either corresponded with her or were connected to her through land litigation claims or business ventures (such as Samuel L. M. Barlow, E. W. Morse, and Mafias Moreno). The volume also includes a sampling of articles written by or about Ruiz de Burton and her family, for the editors feel that it is only when Ruiz de Burton is framed in this fashion that "a broader sense...