Arthur Johnson Memorial Library

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Turquoise trail

by Seifert, Shirley
Published by : Lippincott (Philadelphia) Physical details: 409 p Year: 1950
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Southwest Fiction Sei (Browse shelf) Available 21738

This is the story of a woman's heart and a woman's growth, told against a background of personal and national adventure.

Susan Shelby of Kentucky was 18 in 1846, when she married Samuel Magoffin and went with him on an overland journey from Independence, Mo., to Santa Fe, NM. She was young and romantic, and with Samuel at her side, neither the wilderness, nor the Indians, nor the vast stretches of time and distance held any terrors for her. But as they crossed the plains, forded the rivers, and forged ahead into the mythical land of the Southwest, Susan learned what it was to compress ten years of growing up into a few months. She learned that there is a great deal more to marriage than romance, that Samuel, behind his handsome exterior, could be hard and cold when he had to, and she came to know the despair of losing a first baby amid loneliness and heartbreak. She saw enough, too, to realize that conquest is not all glory. She shared the homesickness of young soldiers far from home, and she came to know the Spanish of Santa Fe and El Paso, some of them noble, some scheming and corrupt, in the ruins of their Empire.

The real Susan Magoffin left a diary which has provided the fuel for the author's imagination, and the author herself has traveled over the same route that Susan took just over a hundred years ago.

21738