Come September, the D.H. Lawrence Ranch Initiatives will commemorate the 100th anniversary of D.H. and Frieda Lawrence’s arrival in New Mexico. One of the most influential writers of the 20th century first visited Santa Fe and Taos in the fall of 1922. How and why it happened is a wild and wacky story. And that’s the beauty of it — both its improbability and its happy ending.

In 1917, Mabel Dodge Luhan was happily hosting art salons in New York City, a wealthy white woman who’d never given a thought to the Southwest. Then, she received a letter from her third husband, sculptor and painter Maurice Sterne. Newly arrived in Taos, he sent this missive: “Dearest Girl, do you want an object in life? Save the Indians, their art — culture — reveal it to the world!”