FIRST HORSES: Stories of the New West...

FIRST HORSES: Stories of the New West by Franklin Gish (University of Nevada Press: $10.95; 134 pp., paperback original). Gish’s short stories are set in the contemporary Southwest, where Native American, Latino and European cultures cross-pollinate, despite efforts to preserve an illusory ethnic purity. His characters are the products of these multiple influences. The narrator of “Blue Danube Waltz,” a promising guitar student, discovers his identity while trying to learn the old Strauss warhorse: “What I felt was the spirit of the great river, the mighty Rio Grande, the water of my birthplace. . . . I felt joy in realizing what I really felt--my river, my soul. . . .”