Books with author Willard thorp

This is a short History based on original research. When President James K. Polk stood before Congress in December 1848 and announced to the world gold had been discovered in California’s foothills, and had a tea caddy-full to prove it, he kicked off the most legendary voluntary emigration of people the world has ever seen. Adventurous men from around the world joined hardy Americans streaming to California to claim their share of the precious metal. By far, most of them traveled by sea. For the Gold-Rushing Argonauts of 1849, California was a long way from anywhere. Some endured a hard sail south in the Atlantic Ocean and then braved Cape Horn, where adverse winds and violent storms could delay them for weeks on end, before finally sailing far across the Pacific to catch a favorable breeze into San Francisco Bay. In all, it could be a six or seven month ordeal before reaching their destination. Overland travel could take as long or longer and had its own perils.

Winner of a gold medal from the Independent Publishers Book Awards as the Best Fiction in the Western Pacific Region in 2009, and a finalist in the Eric Hoffer National Book Awards, Dream Helper tells the story of an Indian woman's struggles to preserve her way of life and family at the Franciscan mission of Santa Barbara. California.Set against a background of California in the early years of the 19th Century, A young Chumash Indian woman, Cayatu, flees to the Santa Barbara Mission to escape the threats of the village shaman only to find she is a prisoner, unable to leave the mission after she is baptized a Christian. When she is told by a mission priest she will be locked up each evening in a new women's quarters she tries to flee only to be found by one of the Spanish soldiers at the fort who tries to return her to the mission.What happens after that begins a bittersweet tale of Cayatu's sturggle to preserve her family and way of life.In fictional form, Dream Helper tells the true story of the Franciscan mission system in early California, a system vastly different than the free life the Chumash people had led before the coming of the Spaniards. The two cultures clashed and Cayatu finds herself caught in the middle.The Midwest Book Review called Dream Helper, "A captivating novel from first page to last. ... "Dream Helper: A Novel of Early California" is a captivating novel from first page to last and a must for historical fiction enthusiasts with an interest in the old west.

A Clash of Cultures When Cayatu, a beautiful, young Chumash woman begs protection from the Franciscan priests at Mission Santa Barbara she s forced to live a captive life, with only the love of a Chumash man and the friendship of a Mexican woman to sustain her. While the Spanish priests and soldiers fight among themselves for power, land and the souls of the Chumash, Cayatu fights to preserve her old way of life. Against a backdrop of romance and intrigue in Santa Barbara s early mission days, Dream Helper tells of the clash between the Christianizing zeal of the Spaniards and the idyllic, spirit-driven world of the fiercely proud Chumash Indians.