Program Description
Event Details
Author Talk with Kate Niles
The Last Hanging of Ángel Martinez by Kate Niles
In Taos County, New Mexico, probation officer Nina Montgomery thinks she knows all about Ángel Martinez, a “frequent flyer” in the judicial system for increasingly sadistic treatment of his ex-partner, Liza Monaghan. When Liza is found dead on her kitchen floor, everyone suspects Ángel—Nina most of all.
When Ángel’s aunt Loretta, Nina’s neighbor and friend, asks her to look into Liza’s murder, Nina reaches out to friend and sheriff’s deputy Larry Baca and becomes embroiled in the case. As Nina delves into Ángel’s and Liza’s lives, she is surprised to learn that Ángel is a santero artist on the rise. A talented but struggling ceramic artist herself, Nina finds her worlds colliding when a Hollywood celebrity wants her art just as the entanglements of Ángel’s family history begin to suggest the source of Liza’s death. Amid the cultural and natural beauty of the Northern Rio Grande Valley, Nina finds herself steeped in the drama of a family gone terribly and violently wrong.
Kate Niles is the author of the novels The Book of John and The Basket Maker and the poetry collection Geographies of the Heart, as well as many short stories, essays, and magazine columns. Niles has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won Book of the Year for The Basket Maker from ForeWord Magazine, the independent press world’s industry journal. Kate Niles was honored with a Colorado Individual Artist Fellowship and other awards. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of the Fine Arts. Learn more about the author at kateniles.com.
Copies of The Last Hanging of Ángel Martinez will be available for purchase at the event via op cit Books.