Return to Rockytop
by Jean Campion
Returning to her beloved one-room school and her adopted community of Rockytop, Colorado, Minta tries to put the terrible and traumatic events of the previous year behind her. However, despite evidence that her abusive husband was killed while being transported from Colorado to Indiana for trial, the young school teacher remains haunted by Edmund's specter of vengeance, and, with good cause.
- Published
- 2008
- ISBN
- 9781932738537
- Pages
- 208
- Place
- Colorado
- Publisher
- Western Reflections Pub. Co.
- Listed at
- $17.21
Publication details from Open Library. The price shown is the last one on record and is historic, not a current offer.
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About this book
Return to Rockytop is the second of Jean Campion's Minta novels. In the description, Minta returns to her beloved one-room school and her adopted community of Rockytop, Colorado, and tries to put the terrible and traumatic events of the previous year behind her.
The trouble is that she cannot be sure those events are over. Evidence says her abusive husband was killed while being transported from Colorado to Indiana for trial, but the description says the young school teacher remains haunted by Edmund's specter of vengeance, and with good cause. A Durango Herald column from 2015 says the series continued with a third book, In the Shadow of Rockytop, which is set ten years later.
The catalogue lists 208 pages, published in 2008 by Western Reflections. Subject headings are the same as for the first book, Minta Forever: abused wives, runaway wives, teachers and abusive men, with fiction as the form. The author, according to a 2025 Durango Herald notice, researched one-room schoolhouses in southwest La Plata County before writing the series.
Who it is for
This book is for readers who have finished Minta Forever and want to find out what became of Minta in Rockytop. It picks up with her in a one-room classroom, so it follows the first book directly and is best read second. The themes include a past marked by abuse, so readers sensitive to that subject should know before they begin.
Ways to use this book
Reading the series in order
This is the second Minta novel, so start with Minta Forever if you have not read it. The Herald notice names both books.
Visiting a real school building
The Animas Museum sits in a school built in 1904. Walk through it if you want a sense of what a classroom of that period looked like.
Starting a school history project
A teacher or student can email the Animas Museum with a research question about a local school, and can then check the Fort Lewis archive for further records.
Go deeper
The novel's heroine teaches in a one room school in a Colorado community. These Durango area sources deal with local school history and the region where the author did her research.
Animas Museum
Run by the La Plata County Historical Society in the 1904 Animas City School building. The site invites research questions and photograph requests.
Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College
A museum, research library and archive on Southwest cultures, with an Online Exhibits section.
Durango Herald: one room schools presentation
A May 2025 notice about a talk on one room schools in southwest La Plata County by the author, Jean Campion.
Good to know
Do I need to read Minta Forever first?
Is it fiction?
Is there a third book?
Where can I buy it?
Have a book of your own?
This is the kind of book the house publishes: regional history, biography, memoir and the stories that belong to a place. Send us yours and a person will read it.