On a trip last fall to Santa Fe I visited three of its independent bookstores and found some gems by authors new to me.
I really enjoyed this tale - historical though not a bit dry, with approachable characters and a witty, feisty narrator. ( )

Wow. I thought this was a really good book. At first, the first chapter, I didn't like it (and almost put it back on the shelf). It was difficult for me to follow the names of the characters, who was who and what they were doing and why, it was all jumbled up, a puzzle that didn't seem to fit together. And I couldn't see where the story was going. Plus it was quite depressing, the historically accurate bad guys winning, the rich and powerful exploiting the majority and the weak. Then all of a sudden the story took an unexpected or quick turn, and it got a lot better. As the book progressed I found myself more and more engaged.

As historical fiction goes, again, while maybe a bit simple I found it really good. I had known a lot about Juan Bautista de Anza. There is the Anza Trail from Culiacan (Sinaloa, Mexico) up through Arizona and California to San Francisco; pretty much everything in California is named for him, and the entire Western United States is still influenced by his expedition. What I did not know so much about was when de Anza was Governor of the Province of New Mexico, New Spain. Cool stuff. Good premise for a work of fiction. ( )