| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Death and Dying in New Mexico. By Martina Will de Chaparro. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007. xxiv, 261 pp. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8263-4163-1.)
At the moment of death, all of life seems to come into focus. Appropriately, then, Martina Will de Chaparro begins her very engaging book, Death and Dying in New Mexico, with a chapter on "the good death." In that final moment, Catholics believed, the devil had his last chance to deprive an individual of his/her destiny to eternal happiness with God. There were, of course, "Rituals to Aid the Soul" (the title of chapter 3) in this hour of "agony," but all kinds of preparations also had to be made for the years beyond death to ensure that the individual reached salvation.	1
The principal sources for Will de Chaparro are wills made by settlers in Spanish New Mexico as well as published primary documents, many of them church instructional documents. The author points out that, interestingly, with the beginning of trade with the United States and the full arrival of the American economy, spiritual concerns no longer appeared in wills, although still included were instructions detailing the burial. A whole new industry related to death had emerged.	. . .

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