C.W. "Buddy" Ritter is a fifth generation native of Mesilla and Las Cruces. He studied at Tulane, received his graduate degree from NMSU, and did post-graduate work at Michigan State University, becoming the first Certified Hotel Administrator in the state of New Mexico. Over the course of 53 years he has owned four hotels, eleven restaurants and two breweries in New Mexico and Arizona. He is currently the owner of Peppers and the Double Eagle on the Plaza in Mesilla. His office in the front of the Double Eagle was once the surgical suite of his great-great grandfather Dr. Edwin Burt, who arrived in Mesilla in the 1870s and is pictured in this book. Craig Holden is the author of six novels, including Four Corners of Night (Delacorte), which won the Great Lakes Book Award and, most recently, Matala (Simon & Schuster). He received his graduate degree from the University of Montana and has taught previously at the University of Toledo and the University of Michigan. He currently lives with his children in Las Cruces and, when he is not writing his own books, works as a freelance writer and editor and also teaches at New Mexico State University.