UNFAMILIAR TERRITORY

Smathers’ historical novel chronicles the tragedies and triumphs of a courageous Californio woman whose family rancho is sold to a vengeful “yanqui.”

It is 1850, and California is in the midst of vast changes since its acquisition by the United States. Gold prospectors have flooded the area, and Americans are gobbling up the ranchos owned for many generations by the Californios (Hispanic people born and raised in California when it was a part of Mexico). Two years earlier, Juanita Castro de la Cruz sold the once-grand Rancho Castro to Malachy Brennan, a ranch hand who left her pregnant years before. To protect her family from potential reprisals from Malachy’s wife—who, she fears, may discover Malachy is the father of Juanita’s 15-year-old son, Joaquin—Juanita found husbands for her two younger sisters and sent Joaquin off to find work at the gold mines. For two years, she has remained working at the rancho and caring for her widowed mother. After her mother dies, Juanita flees in the middle of the night on Malachy’s favorite horse, Canela. She is determined to find her son and rides to her sister’s house hoping for help, but the reunion is acrimonious. Guilty and desperate, she heads to San Francisco armed with a cache of her sister and brother-in-law’s possessions to sell. She purchases a mule train and begins her journey as a lone muleteer, following the trails from gold mine to gold mine in search of Joaquin. Smathers packs her complex melodrama with tragedy, hair-raising danger, and stunning successes. Juanita’s saga continues for more than 20 years as she builds, loses, and rebuilds her fortune. The novel provides a poignant, vivid depiction of the prejudices that threatened the Californios, who were already enduring the loss of their land. The descriptions of conditions in the cold, wet mining camps are stingingly painful (“There are no buildings, just canvas tents and mud and more mud”) as both gold reserves and hope peter out. Peppered with the diverse linguistics and culture clashes of the era, the narrative is an engaging portrayal of the period, and Juanita is a formidable, independent female lead.

A historically informative tale of survival.