PositiveThe Santa Fe New Mexican\"Southern New Mexico is Joshua Wheeler’s home terrain, and Acid West is his phenomenal ode to it ... Acid West does not form a succinct survey of a boundary-delineated region. The essays sprawl, enveloping religion, philosophy, history, science, and pop culture in a way that complicates things as seemingly simple as human ears ... Throughout the essays, there is a struggle for deeper understanding — of an indifferent region, yes, but also of the indifferent forces at play regardless of locale: technology, gravity, mortality ... This is Wheeler’s debut collection, and hopefully, the first of many in which that ache for profundity gives readers so much to reflect on.\
