What Men Call Treasure: The Search for Gold at Victorio Peak - Tapa dura

"This book's truth is not about gold, but a tale (history, fiction, philosophy, and authorial intervention). That is why the book's incomplete title (What men call treasure ... the gods call dross) is so poignant: It is the story, in all its complications, winding paths, claustrophobia, and sometimes frustrating dead ends, that is the true wealth." --San Antonio Current "Delonas's hunt makes for a sometimes quirky, always entertaining tale, full of strange characters, government intervention, and no small number of mistakes. Public libraries in which travel and adventure accounts are popular will want to buy this one." --ForeWord Magazine "A saga of discovery, lost treasure, and phenomenally questionable acts of the U.S. Government, What Men Call Treasure is a fascinating true story of lost mysteries, doubly remarkable in today's modern era when most corners of the earth have been thoroughly explored." --Midwest Book Review "This wide-ranging book zigzags through time to tell the story of one man's fanatical belief in buried gold...What Men Call Treasure is highly readable and puts treasure hunting at a personal level, including numerous period photographs." --San Antonio Express-News "David Schweidel and Robert Boswell, writers familiar with the Southwest, have written What Men Call Treasure, another look at the search for the Victorio Peak gold...This newest book is a bit different. The authors inject themselves into the story." --El Paso Times "You don't have to be a treasure hunter to enjoy this book. You just have to appreciate fresh narrative technique and two fiction writers daring enough to tackle a true story that has no beginning and no end." --Chamber Four "Starting with a nod to Treasure Island, and winding down with a nod to Odysseus, this book is filled with enough pitfalls and promises to make any would-be treasure-seeking throw down their shovel and give up the hunt." --El Paso Scene

In 1937, Doc Noss--part-adventurer, part-conman--and his wife Babe discovered fabulous treasure inside the caverns of New Mexico's Victorio Peak. They dynamited the tunnel to hide the treasure from other treasure hunters. At least that's what they said happened. Babe's grandson Terry Delonas grew up listening to his grandmother's magical stories about her dead husband and Victorio Peak. Her stories were his legacy. In the 1980s, Terry, a gay man, tested positive for HIV. He decided that searching for Victorio's lost treasure was the only dream that would give his life meaning. With his grandmother's grit and her gift for talking her way through tough places, he found money and support to follow his dream and overcome many obstacles--bad weather, broken equipment, the army, Congress, and other fortune hunters. But Victorio Peak, that inscrutable and mysterious mountain, would not give up its treasure. "This book's truth is...not about gold, but a tale (history, fiction, philosophy, and authorial intervention). That is why the book's incomplete title ("What men call treasure...the gods call dross") is so poignant: It is the story, in all its complications, winding paths, claustrophobia, and sometimes frustrating dead ends, that is the true wealth." --San Antonio Current Robert Boswell, an acclaimed novelist, is the author of seven books, most recently Century's Son (Picador, 2003). His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and other magazines. He shares the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston with his wife, novelist Antonya Nelson. David Schweidel, who grew up in El Paso on the Mexican border, remembers feeling like an anthropologist long before he knew what an anthropologist was. His first novel, Confidence of the Heart, won the 1995 Milkweed National Fiction Prize. He lives in Berkeley with his wife Linda and works at the University of California.