Once upon a time in Los Angeles, water was everywhere--in rivers that rendered the vast plain a marsh; in underground streams that provided an abundance of water for people, cattle and crops. This is the lush landscape that the young Henry Scott encounters when he arrives, half-dead, in the pueblo of Los Angeles in 1843, during the waning days of Mexican rule. In this fertile place along the Los Angeles River, Scott's fortunes begin to change. His story is intertwined with that of a wealthy rancher (inspired by the historical figure John Temple), whose kind will change life in California forever; a determined Tongva Indian woman, Big Headed Girl, whom Scott comes to love; and Padre José, a Franciscan friar who embodies the brutality of the mission system, yet tenderly cultivates the fragile beauty of his beloved passion flowers. As these stories unfold and converge, Barbara Crane's precise and lyrical prose, and her deft weaving of historical fact and human drama, make for the richest of fictional tapestries--both epic and intimate in scale, infused with a sense of loss, but also with hard-won hope and the possibility of redemption.
Industry Reviews
The early California landscape in this finely-crafted historical novel is a potent force shaped by those who occupy the lands. Barbara Crane brings deep empathy to her characters as they struggle through a tumultuous era.
Anne Finger, author of Call me Ahab
Winner of Prairie Schooner Award for Fiction
Here is the Los Angeles basin before the American conquest, a portrait of the land and people painted in brilliant colors...showing the emotions, environment and manmade objects woven carefully and accurately into a dense and very readable novel.
Steve Iverson, Historical Curator (ret.), Rancho Los Cerritos Hsitoric Site, Long Beach, CA
