With the powerful simplicity that characterizes the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Laughing Boy, Oliver La Farge depicts the colorful and true accounts of the enchanting life of his wife Consuelo Baca and her family on a sprawling sheep ranch in the 1920's.

Set in a valley nestled in the mountains of Northern New Mexico, Behind the Mountains is full of lively and poignant anecdotes about the Baca household, the village people, and a New-world Spanish style of life that was ended by the Depression and the encroachment of the outside world.