Suzanna: A Romance of Early California

The tinkling of guitars in the moonlight; the softly hummed words of a Spanish love song; the sweet, liquid music of the bells in the mission San Carlos De Carmelo; fleeting pictures of old Father Junipero Serro—these and a hundred other rich memories flood the mind as one unfolds the story of little Suzanna, a peon girl, poor, futureless at a time when the Dons and the grandsons of the conquistadores were supreme in California. You think of Ramona; the dust covered stretches of El Camino Real—the King’s Highway—appear before your eyes; you hear the roaring of quaint, old-fashioned, muzzleloading guns, the clash of cold steel; subconsciously you thrill to the deeds of valor, of sacrifice and danger. You are in step with romance and adventure when it was in its heyday in Old California. Red-lipped, smoky-eyed senoritas smile on you; your nostrils dilate with ungent aromas of hot, golden brown tortillas, or fragrant, steaming tamales; for you the clock has been turned back a hundred years—you walk in a land that is gone, but in which fate played as recklessly with the lives of men and women as it does in our own world today.