Valley of the Guns: The Pleasant Valley War and the Trauma of Violence

For a five-year period in the late 1880s, Western settlers in Pleasant Valley, Arizona were caught up in nearly constant conflict, facing violence from other settlers, members of the nearby Apache tribe, and even local sheriffs in what is now known as the Pleasant Valley War. Valley of the Guns (University of Oklahoma Press) analyzes the cultural and geographical pressures which helped incite conflict in Pleasant Valley, as well as the effect of continuous violence on settlers’ psyches.