Kirjahaku

When Cayatu, a Chumash Indian woman, is banished from her village, she is taken by two Franciscan priests to join the new Mission Santa Barbara. She is baptized there along with several other new neophytes and begins a restricted life far beyond what she expected. Even though she meets a man she is very attracted to, she yearns for the freer life living on her own along the ocean. In the process of trying to escape the mission, she kills one of the Spanish soldiers, but isn't found out and returns to her stray mat in the mission's women's quarters.She is sent to the soldiers' fort to weave cloth for the men's uniforms and is repeatedly raped by the commandant of the Presidio. A mixed-race child is born of the rape and the baby is immediately taken from her at birth and given to a Mexican woman. Not knowing the woman's infant is the girl she gave birth to, she helps the Mexican woman raise the child. She marries the Chumash man who courts her and her nephew comes to the Mission to be with her.As more Chumash join the mission, because their food supply has dwindled, diseases spread through the mission village and many die. Discipline grows more onerous as the soldiers and priests find themselves abandoned by Spain as it struggles to maintain its hold on its New World colonies. A major earthquake destroys much of the mission, pueblo of Santa Barbara and the Chumash village. The Mission Indians are forced into backbreaking labor to rebuild everything. When the strain gets to be too much, they revolt.Cayatu must decide her future. She begins to leave the mission village but then thinks about her baby girl. The surprise ending brings Cayatu face to face with the commandant who raped her.

In 1849 they came to California from around the world ...Some came for the gold. Some came for the adventure. Some came to escape their past. But they all came with dreams...And their lives were forever changed. Hannah Runyon, from Boston's Beacon Hill, lost her fianc but found her true love. Delfina Austen pined for her lost lover but saved her most important possession. Miette climbs her way to respectability but must fight for her reputation. Their Golden Dreams follows the lives of men and women thrown together in the rough and tumble days of the gold diggings in California. Most didn't stay long and when they left - richer or poorer than when they came - they started exciting new lives you won't want to miss. Their Golden Dreams is the third novel in Willard Thompson's Chronicles of California series. In each novel, Thompson seamlessly layers accurate California history with adventurous romantic plots and characters so real you live their lives with them. Dream Helper, A novel of Early California, and Delfina's Gold are other novels in the Chronicles series.

The Girl From the Lighthouse tells the compelling story of Emma Dobbins. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she was raised by her father, a lighthouse keeper at Point Conception in California, where early on she discovers her artistic talent. At the age of 17, Emma travels to Paris with a chaperone, to attend art school but is separated from the chaperone when the chaperone becomes ill. Emma arrives alone in Paris with no money, no language skills, and no friends. A chance meeting with a young working girl in the train station becomes her first Parisian friend. The setting is Paris in the 1860s-70s, the start of the Belle poque. France soon is involved in the Franco/Prussian War and the Commune Uprising; difficult times for Emma and all Frenchmen. Initially rejected by art schools, her determination keeps her moving toward her goal in the art world, where the Impressionists are starting to change the world. Frenchmen fall in love with her beautiful face and lustrous dark hair. Some wanted to paint her, others to court her, but either way, she does not abide by the rules they try to impose on her. Emma grows into an accomplished artist but never gives up her own principles... even when someone steals something precious to her. The story is told in the first person, present tense, allowing the reader to enter the story and feel a part of it as it unfolds, sharing with Emma her highs and lows, loves and rejections, all focused in the art world of Paris. The novel is filled with vivid characters, both fictional and real people, and the story unfolds gracefully from the 1870s until 1912, just prior to the start of WWI

When Teresa Diaz's father is arrested in an ICE raid in a Los Angeles area city and deported back to Mexico, her family begins to come apart. She is a student at UCLA on a scholarship for undocumented aliens (Dreamers) looking to have a life in the U.S. in communications. Her brother in High school and her elementary school sister begin having serious troubles without a father in the household. At work in a fast-food drive-through, Teri, as she wants to be known is approached by a Mexican gangbanger who offers to take you to her father. Doubting the guy wants more than picking her up, she resists, but day by day, as her sister is sent home from school and her brother is brought home dunk by the police, she gives in and goes across the border with him. Against her wishes, he takes her to a beach house in Tijuana and leaves her. She learns that illegal activities are going on in the house but without transportation, and without a birth certificate --either Mexican or American-- she can't cross the border alone.After several days, virtually a prisoner, the owner of the house, a fat woman known as Mama Gorda arranges to get her across the border with a young Mexican man who rides a fast motorcycle. On the way, he takes her to lunch and there offers to talk her deeper into Mexico to find her father. She agrees, travels in his private plane and begins a romance while searching for her father in Michoacan state. The more she becomes involved, the more she is involved in activities she doesn't understand but suspects they're illegal.Returning to Monte Vista, her LA area home, still without her father, she finds she can no longer return to UCLA, seeks a job, connects with a Latina who bullied her he school. When her brother is arrested for jobbery, Teri returns to Mexico seeking help from the people she suspects to belong to a cartel.Ultimately, she is sponsored by the people in Mexico to participate in the Miss Mexico contest, not realizing it is the Cartel that is promoting her. In the end, she will face a life-changing decision whether to continue her romance with the son of the cartel's head or try to stand on her own. And whether to remain in Mexico or return to LA.