Robert Laxalt; Writer on Basques and Rural Nevada

Robert P. Laxalt, an author and historian whose writings defined the Nevada spirit and Basque culture in America, died Friday at a Reno hospital after a lengthy illness. He was 77.

The brother of former U.S. Sen. Paul Laxalt, he was the founding editor of the University of Nevada Press and the author of 17 books. Among the best-known of his works was “Sweet Promised Land,” a 1957 memoir of a journey he made with his sheepherder father to the family’s ancestral home in a Basque village high in the French Pyrenees.

Considered the dean of Nevada writers, Laxalt coined the phrase “the other Nevada” to describe the state’s immense expanses of sparsely populated land that are far removed from the glamour spots of Las Vegas and Reno. He called this “the Nevada that few people see, where personal freedom and the chance to be an individual thrive in an uncrowded landscape.”

His article titled “The Other Nevada” won a Golden Spur Award for Western Writing for the best nonfiction story of 1974.

One of six children, Laxalt was born in the Northern California town of Alturas and grew up in Carson City, where his immigrant Basque parents ran a boardinghouse. He attended Santa Clara University for three years, leaving in 1943 for a posting with the U.S. Consular Service in what was then the Belgian Congo. One of his last books, “A Private War: An American Code Officer in the Belgian Congo,” published in 1998, described his experiences there.

He earned a degree in English in 1947 from the University of Nevada, then worked for several years as a correspondent for United Press International. He also was a Fulbright scholar and a consultant in Basque culture at the Library of Congress, and wrote for National Geographic and other publications.

In 1954 he joined the University of Nevada as director of news and publications and in 1961 started the University of Nevada Press. He later helped found a Basque studies program and taught writing and literature. In 1988 he was named the first holder of the Distinguished Nevada Author Chair.

In a 1957 Times review, “Sweet Promised Land” was called “one of the distinguished books of the year and one no Western reader should miss reading from cover to cover.” The book was reissued in 1986 by University of Nevada Press.

Other works include “In a Hundred Graves--A Basque Portrait,” published in 1973, and the semi-autobiographical 1989 novel, “The Basque Hotel,” the first in a trilogy completed in 1994. A 1985 novel, “A Cup of Tea in Pamplona,” was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and won one of Spain’s highest literary honors, the Tambor de Oro.

In addition to his brother, Laxalt is survived by his wife, Joyce, a son and two daughters.