Newman's debut chronicles the challenging trek of a spunky young widow from Missouri to Santa Fe in 1846. Following the death of her only child and her alcoholic, mentally unbalanced husband, sheltered New Orleans belle Carolina Harper, of American and Spanish-Mexican descent, decides to go to Santa Fe to care for her three motherless cousins. She hires Gerald Gaspard, a mountain man with a scarred face, to act as her guide. In a harsh and hazardous land, Carolina is forced to act heroically on several occasions and wins the admiration and respect of the stalwart Gaspard, who comes to mean a great deal more to her than a mere employee. Carolina recovers from a concussion after being thrown from her horse and even deals courageously with her violent, Anglo-hating uncle, Colonel Diego Navarro, when he tries to use her as a political pawn. Newman alternates third-person narration with Carolina's journal entries and somewhat flat discussions of the politics of the time, and the war with Mexico. While the terrain has been trod before, Newman manages to sustain action and excitement in this addition to the publisher's Women of the West series.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
Carolina Harper is bound to traverse the Santa Fe trail in the spring of 1846. War with Mexico is imminent, and Santa Fe, the Jewel of New Mexico, lies at the heart of the contested territory. Still numb from the deaths of her son and her husband, Carolina sets out from Westport, Missouri, with a freed slave, a Mexican servant, and a scarred, reticent Mountain Man. The plight of her three young, motherless cousins goads her into action, for she is determined to reach them in Santa Fe before the anticipated war.
The Santa Fe trail is fraught with dangers--disease, Indians, the hazards of nature. And beyond the travails of the perilous journey lies New Mexico, a territory claimed by two powerful nations preparing for war. Carolina herself feels town between the two cultures.
Born in the United States of Spanish descent, she enters the strange and marvelous world of her father's origin only to come face-to-face with the most feared man in New Mexico--her father's mysterious brother, who will stop at nothing to crush the swelling tide of the invading Anglos...
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