DE SOTO: CHILD OF THE SUN

There is not too much about De Soto here, but the effect he and his kind had on the shaping of early events in the New World is brought into the clear through the story of Lucas, a young tailor's apprentice, on the 1539 expedition through Florida to the Mississippi. Leading them and driving them is De Soto whose vision of gold that bespoke different kinds of riches was fulfilled only by a river, in which he was buried. Lucas comes to a realization of this at last but through the story he is more directly concerned with becoming a soldier, retrieving his brother from Indian captivity and then returning to Spain to start his own future.