John Treadwell Nichols was born to some level of privilege and then became the voice of the disenfranchised. He grew up an Easterner and published several novels to acclaim while living in New York. One, The Sterile Cuckoo, put him into the anointed class of writers who got a film deal immediately, with Liza Minnelli playing the lead role of Pookie.

Then he became a New Mexican.

His New Mexico Trilogy: The Milagro Beanfield War, The Magic Journey, and The Nirvana Blues, put him on our map. Laugh-out-loud funny he parsed the language, traditions, foibles of our cultures in northern New Mexico, and somehow got to the core of the turmoil and angst that roils through this magical geography.