Cities of Gold

The Southwestern United States has become a battleground for those who promote new land development and those who wish to preserve the land’s beauty and heritage. Drawing together contemporary urban land-use politics and a scandal more than four centuries old, William K. Hartmann has crafted a highly charged novel of injustice with powerful echoes in the modern world.

Arizona, 1989. Rooney Development, Inc, hires city planner Kevin Scott to research a potential development site outside Tucson. The president of the corporation hopes to find a colorful historical background that will draw investors to the site.

Arizona, 1539. Fray Marcos de Niza of Spain journeys into the unknown and reports the fabled seven cities of gold, launching Coronado’s huge army of conquistadors to conquer the American southwest. Coronado’s soldiers and later scholars eventually called Marcos a fraud and liar, his report a mere fiction. But Kevin, sifting through mountains of historical documents discovers the truth about Marcos. The friar was discredited for others’ profit; conquistadors then, and developers now were pursuing American dream to get rich quick—at the expense of land and history. Rooney’s development, Kevin realizes, may hold historic clues to the first Spanish explorations of America.

Kevin’s report to Rooney becomes the central piece of evidence in a tumultuous legal debate over land use, and Kevin finds himself attacked, like de Niza centuries before and threatened by those whose agendas are hindered by truth.

Calling on many historical sources, and quoting actual documents written by de Niza and participants in Coronado’s army, William K. Hartmann has fashioned a heartbreakingly brilliant novel of timeless beauty and human betrayal.