HEARTS ABLAZE

Hearts Ablaze is about a New Mexico fire that destroyed nearly 350,000 acres in 2022. It incinerated homes, farms, killed wildlife, and disfigured the land but did not destroy the spirit of proud, humble people, who now resolve to start over.

Carvalko’s monograph tells a story about the wildfire through poetry, pictures, and vignettes. A natural disaster threatens to decimate its victims, but an ever-present human spirit promises renewal in its aftermath. In less than several hundred feet, a wall of fire bears down on his casita in the New Mexican Sangre de Cristo mountains. He sees the plumes of smoke rise from the village where his father-in-law Jose was born over a hundred and twenty years ago. He lived 99 years, unstoppable, quietly battling one tragedy after another, never giving up. He is but one among thousands who, over the past 500 years, passed on a culture of survival in this rugged country.