As a first-time book author, I will forever be grateful to the writers and publications that have published positive reviews of Crosses of Iron since its release by the University of New Mexico Press this past October.

That includes David Steinberg at the Albuquerque Journal, Jim Frost at the New Mexico Genealogist and David Caffey at High Country magazine among them. In each case, the writers or magazines had notified me in advance that they were planning to publish a review of the book so I knew they were coming.

So you can imagine my surprise when during a periodic Google search of the book title earlier this month that I came across an entry that had been posted unbeknownst to me three days earlier – a dual review of Crosses of Iron and another Western mining book on the True West magazine website.

In “Tale of Two Cities,” editor Stuart Rosebrook compares and contrasts the mining histories of Dawson, New Mexico, in Crosses of Iron with that of Tombstone, Arizona, in Don Chaput and David D. de Haas’ Tombstone: Arizona Mystique: A History of the History-Making (in the World’s Most Influential “Mining Camp.”)

Here is an excerpt of what the reviewer had to say about Crosses of Iron:

“Fortunately for students and scholars of the West, journalist Nick Pappas decided that the story of the nearly forgotten—and completely abandoned coal town—was worth researching and writing about. The award-winning writer’s Crosses of Iron: The Tragic Story of Dawson, New Mexico and Its Twin Mining Disasters (University of New Mexico Press, $21.95) is an instant classic and a cautionary tale of what the coal company’s pursuit of profit cost in human lives …. Pappas’s Crosses of Iron should be considered one of the finest investigations of Western mining history …”

When I began work on this book five years ago, my primary goal was to do justice to the history of Dawson and to the many families who share a special bond to this old coal town to this very day. To have the book recognized as “an instant classic” and “one of the finest investigations of Western mining history” is an unexpected bonus.

The July/August issue of True West magazine is available at newstands or can be ordered here.