Sangre de Cristo

Aaron Jefferson and his best friend Josh face the challenges of life in the Old West when they leave their postwar Shenandoah Valley for the Great Plains in 1865. Unanticipated trouble changes their lives, and they continue on to the Southern Rocky Mountains. In the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico they encounter: love, clash of cultures, struggle, hardship, spiritual discovery, and what it means to sacrifice for others. Interaction between Native Americans and the two young men, who have decided to try their hand at life in the still somewhat unspoiled West, brings new insight to them as they mature as individuals. The same can be said for the young Navajo woman who they meet, who is a refugee from the U.S. Government's cruel interment of her people. The book references, but does not treat within the narrative, such events as the Long Walk, Fort Sumner, and Bosque Redondo. The Diné, the Navajo endured much and are as true an example of the abuse and wanton official eradication of Native American Indian culture as Cherokee and other Eastern nations who endured the Trail of Tears. Perhaps their story will be more closely. looked at in the next, or some future, book by this author, who has been captured and captivated by it. Young people matured fast on the American frontier. It had been true since the first European stepped off of a wooden ship into the West Atlantic surf and true for Native American youth ages before that. A hard, rugged, beautiful land that molded and honed you or killed you, America made men and women out of children in a heartbeat.