Essay Review The Woman at Otowi Crossing, revised edition. By Frank Waters. (Athens: Swallow Press/ Ohio University Press, 1987. 314 pages, $9.95.) Frank Waters’ The Woman at Otowi Crossing, one of the truly great books in American literature, was originally printed under the restrictions and judgmental limitations of its publisher. Artistically successful, it nevertheless did not contain the full narrative scope of Waters’ initial vision. Now, thanks to Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, Waters’original version, a full Otowi Crossing, has been made available to readers. I have to admit that while I enthusiastically supported the possibility of the revised edition, I approached the new book with some trepidation. One hates to have a work that one loves tampered with, even by its author. I harbored a secret fear that the incredibly tight and thoroughly original time sequence—the flash forwards and flashbacks so crucial to the reader’s emo tional involvement—might not function as smoothly and as effectively as it does in the previously published version. But readers with such an apprehen sion can relax. The revised version functions as effectively as ever. The myth of the Woman at Otowi Crossing comes through, and there is no loss of focus on Helen because of the additional material. Indeed, the older parts seem to shine more brightly as a result of the light thrown off by the new. The novel was originally intended to be five or six hundred pages in length. At one stage in its growth it apparently achieved seven hundred pages. The version finally published by Swallow Press in 1966, and retained in all subsequent continuous printings, had been reduced to three hundred pages, the result of the merciless cutting and condensation urged for publication (Tanner 95).* The new volume actually appears thinner than the previous ones. But the type face is smaller, obscuring the fact that Waters has added over a hundred typed pages of new material and has, of course, restructured the original material to accommodate it. He has restored the book to its fullest form and then pruned from the point of view of his mature artistic judgment. The result is even deeper characterization, more detailed description, and more information about practically everything in the book. It isdifficult to describe how these additions, some ofwhich require whole new chapters, interact, influencing all the other parts of the book. One of them, which tells of Helen and Emily attending a party in nearby Pojoaque, illustrates well the complexity and the interconnected influences of these addi * Readers will find the correspondence on pages 189-196 of special interest in regard to the augmentation in the 1987 edition. Waters protested repeatedly against the reduction of his original manuscript. 46 Western American Literature tions. The party is given by the wealthy Mrs. Laura Cartier and presents us with a totally new element in the local society. It shows the kind of social life from which Helen first withdraws, as she comes more and more to prefer the company of the simple women of the village and the pueblo. It also reveals to Emily a level of society of which she was undoubtedly aware in the East but which she did not know existed in New Mexico and one to which she certainly did not think her Mother had access. Helen had warned her that she would meet here a group of valley residents she didn’t expect. It was as if Emily had discovered more— a New Mexico hidden within New Mexico. Never again would she be surprised at finding such little oases of luxury hidden behind crumbling adobe walls. All attested the gradual influx of people dis tinctive and strangely different from the Indians and Spanish and early Anglo settlers. Retired refugees from Europe and the crowded cities of the east coast, enormously oil-rich Texans, homosexual and lesbian couples seeking escape from the restrictive prejudice of orthodox society, writers, painters and sculptors, mere esthetes and dabblers, and invalids forced to live in the high dry air, they all somehow fused into a common type whose hallmark was a vociferous love of the Land of Enchantment. With money and taste they were bringing it to...