Describes the materials, construction, and uses of adobe shelters, including the pueblos and cliff dwellings, made by various Indians in the Four Corners region of the Southwest, and explains the significance of the kiva.

"Tike and Ella May Hamlin struggle to plant roots in the arid land of the Texas Panhandle. The husband and wife live in a precarious wooden farm shack, but Tike yearns for a sturdy house that will protect them from the treacherous elements. Thanks to a five-cent government pamphlet, Tike has the know-how to build a simple adobe dwelling, a structure made from the land itself-fireproof, windproof, Dust Bowl-proof. A house of earth. Though they are...

A biography of Betty Stewart (1925-1994), who gained national publicity in the 1980s as a homebuilder and an authentic Santa Fe character. Certain aspects of Santa Fe's history - its reputation as a refuge for eccentrics, its decades-long effort to define itself through its architecture and its overwhelming popularity in the 1980s - are also addressed.