Linda Ronstadt, one of the most versatile singers of the past fifty years, is the author of Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir (2013). Her four-decade recording career encompassed country, rock ‘n’ roll, the Great American Songbook, jazz, opera, Broadway standards, Mexican and Tropical music and Americana. Her worldwide album sales totaled more than 100 million records, with more than thirty gold and platinum records. She has won eleven Grammy Awards and is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She serves on the advisory board of Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy, which has taught Mexican folk music, dance and art to children in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than three decades. She lives in San Francisco.

Lawrence Downes is a writer and editor in New York. For more than thirty years, he worked in newspapers, including the Chicago Sun-Times, Newsday, and the New York Times where he was an editor and member of the editorial board, specializing in issues about immigration, New York City and state politics and government, disability rights, veterans affairs, and the environment.

Bill Steen is a professional photographer, specializing in the beauty and bounty of the Sonoran borderlands for more than three decades. Along with his wife, Athena Swentzell Steen, he is a founder of the Canelo Project, near Elgin, Arizona, a family-based community and an applied educational center that gives people hands-on experience with a lifestyle that aims to be sustainable. The Steens are the authors, with David Bainbridge, of The Straw Bale House, among other books.

Contents

Introduction by Lawrence Downes

A Note from Linda on the Recipes

1. Where the Water Turns

2. Desert People

Sidebar: A Letter to Francis

Sidebar: Saints and Angels

3. Margarita’s Letters

4. Mi Pueblo

Sidebar: Lupe and Fred: A Love Story

Sidebar: Aunt Luisa’s Letters

Sidebar: Let’s Talk Horses

5. La Frontera

Sidebar: Casa Alitas

6. The Mission Garden

7. Canelo Diary

8. Desert Cattle

9. El Futuro

10. Coda: My Dream

Song List
Gratitude

About the Authors