The Turquoise: A Gripping Women's Historical Drama of Coming of Age and Native American Culture – Tragic Search for Belonging - Softcover

Seton, Anya

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0544242181 ISBN 13: 9780544242180

Verlag: Mariner Books, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

“Seton, at her best, has a gaudy vitality all her own, and a sure sense of theatre. This reader for one, enjoyed The Turquoise enormously.” — New York Times

“With accurate historical background, Anya Seton has constructed a touchingly tragic story of a girl who tried so hard to find happiness that she lost everything in her search. The life of Santa Fe Cameron lingers long in memory.” — Springfield Republican

Santa Fe Cameron was named for the town where she was born, because her Scottish father and a distressed priest could agree on no other name. When she is seven years old, the unexpected death of her father makes her an orphan. Shortly thereafter, a Navajo shaman recognizes her psychic powers and gives her a turquoise pendant as a keepsake. This turquoise, the Indian symbol of the spirit, dominates her life. She eventually leaves the simple beauty of her native New Mexico to search for happiness in the opulent New York of the 1870s.

For “Fey,” life is made up of violent contrasts: the rough wagon that brings her East and the scented carriages waiting before her own Fifth Avenue mansion; the glittering world of the Astors and a dreary cell in the Tombs. All the color, excitement, and rich period detail that distinguish Anya Seton’s novels are here, together with one of her most unusual heroines.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

ANYA SETON (1904–1990) was the author of many best-selling historical novels, including Katherine, Avalon, Dragonwyck, Devil Water, and Foxfire. She lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

“Seton, at her best, has a gaudy vitality all her own, and a sure sense of theatre. This reader, for one, enjoyed The Turquoise enormously.”—New York Times

Santa Fe Cameron was named for the town where she was born, because her Scottish father and a distressed priest could agree on no other name. When she is seven years old, the unexpected death of her father makes her an orphan. Shortly thereafter, a Navajo shaman recognizes her psychic powers and gives her a turquoise pendant as a keepsake. This turquoise, the Indian symbol of the spirit, dominates her life. She eventually leaves the simple beauty of her native New Mexico to search for happiness in the opulent New York of the 1870s.

For “Fey,” life is made up of violent contrasts: the rough wagon that brings her East and the scented carriages waiting before her own Fifth Avenue mansion; the glittering world of the Astors and a dreary cell in the Tombs. All the color, excitement, and rich period detail that distinguish Anya Seton’s novels are here, together with one of her most unusual heroines.

“With accurate historical background, Anya Seton has constructed a touchingly tragic story of a girl who tried so hard to find happiness that she lost everything in her search. The life of Santa Fe Cameron lingers long in memory.”—Springfield Republican

ANYA SETON (1904–1990) was the author of many best-selling historical novels, including Katherine,The Winthrop Woman,Avalon,Dragonwyck,Green Darkness,Devil Water, and Foxfire. She lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.
 

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The Turquoise

By Anya Seton

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Copyright © 1973 Anya Seton Chase
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-544-24218-0

CHAPTER 1

Santa Fe Cameron was named for the town of her birth, because her Scottish father and a distressed little New Mexican priest could agree on no other name.

This was on the twenty-third of January, 1850, while a bitter wind blew snow down from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and darkened by contrast the adobe walls of the New Mexican capital.

In a bare two-room casita on lower San Francisco Street, the Scot, who was doctor as well as husband, stood beside the priest staring down at the woolen pallet where Conchita Valdez Cameron had given birth to the baby three hours ago. Conchita was dying. Her dark eyes were fixed on her husband's face in unquestioning love while her already cold hand clutched the crucifix on her breast. The beautiful ivory pallor, her Spanish inheritance, had dulled to a bluish-gray as the life of her eighteen-year-old body flowed away in hemorrhages that Andrew Cameron for all his skill was powerless to staunch.

The padre had administered the last rites; his concern was now with the feeble infant, prematurely born. It showed every sign of soon following its mother and must be baptized quickly.

"What name shall it be, doctór?" whispered Padre Miguel to the grim man by the bed, "María de la Concepción like her mother? or Juana — Catalina?" He paused seeing the haggard misery in the other man's face tighten to resistance. "Come, my son," he said with gentle urgency, looking at the baby and thinking that the actual name hardly mattered, "this is the feast day of San Ildefonso, shall we give her that name?"

Except for the hissing of the piñon logs in the high Indian fireplace there was silence in the small room, which was whitewashed to the same glistening purity as the snow which sifted into the still calle outside. Then the baby gave a faint whimper and Andrew turned on the priest. "My child shall be named for no whining Spanish saint."

Padre Miguel flushed, his fingers, already wet with the holy water, trembled and an angry rebuke leaped to his tongue. But he checked it. He had encountered the Scottish doctor's stubborn Calvinism before, and he made allowances for the man's anguish. In a nature which showed no softness to the world, it had been astonishing to see the tenderness which this harsh stranger had always given to the girl on the pallet. Nor, to do him justice, had he interfered with Conchita's own faith. During the past months she had been untiring in her prayers to Our Lady of Guadalupe; prayers for forgiveness for the wrong she had done her family, prayers for a safe delivery of the baby within her womb.

The priest dimly understood that part of the doctor's violence came from realization that the Compassionate Mother had not seen fit to answer these prayers, and that lacking the consolation of the True Faith the man had no recourse but blind wrath.

So the padre's anger died, but he said inflexibly, "The baby must bear a Catholic name, doctór."

The Scot's jaw squared; he opened his mouth to speak, but the girl on the bed stirred, her straining eyes widened. "Please —" she whispered.

Andrew's face dissolved. He knelt on the hard-packed dirt floor beside the pallet. "Shall we name her Santa Fe, then?" he said softly. "It's papist enough, and —" He stopped, went on with difficulty, "We have been happy here."

The padre saw the girl relax and a wistful smile curve the gray lips, so he dipped his hand again in the holy water. Santa Fe, he thought, "The Holy Faith" — well, why not? He made the sign of the cross on the baby's forehead.

In the corner of the room those two completely disparate human beings looked at each other with the great love which had bridged the gulf between them. The smile on Conchita's mouth lost its sadness. She tried to lift her hand toward the blunt face near her own, to smooth away, as she had often done, the furrows in his forehead. She gave a long gentle sigh and her hand fell to the sheet.

The baby astonished everyone by living. A wet-nurse was found for her, Ramona Torres, wife of a lazy and bad-tempered woodcutter who lived across the Santa Fe River near the Chapel of San Miguel in the poor Analco quarter. La Ramona and her Pedro were dazzled to get three monthly pesos for so easy and insignificant a service. It was the little padre who negotiated this transaction by means of two gold sovereigns flung him by Andrew after Conchita's burial. For six months Andrew would not look at his child, nor hear mention of her. He shut himself into the room where Conchita had died. He went out to the market in the plaza only when hunger drove him to buy a little food, a handful of frijoles, or some hunks of hard, stringy mutton which he cooked himself in a pot over the fire and washed down with goat's milk.

He lived in an isolation which nobody tried to penetrate except Padre Miguel, who came back from his visits to the casita thwarted and rebuffed by Andrew's tight-lipped silences.

In July the padre tried a new plan. He sent Ramona with the baby to Andrew, saying, "If he will not let you in, tell him that the little Conchita is watching from paradise and her mother's heart is very sorrowful."

Ramona nodded, her broad peasant face showing no curiosity. She pulled her dirty pink rebozo over her head, wrapped one end of the scarf around the baby, and padded to the cottonwood footbridge across the river, her brown splayed feet raising little puffs of dust on the path to San Francisco Street.

Andrew opened the door at Ramona's timid knock. "Here —" said the woman, frightened by the expression in the bloodshot eyes that glared at her. "Your baby. El padre say Conchita very sad in paradise you no see baby." She sidled past the motionless Andrew to lay the swaddled bundle on the only table. Then she darted out the door, murmuring, "Later I come back." And she hurried away to the delights of the plaza and a gossip with friends in the shade of the portales.

Andrew shut the door and walked slowly to the table. The baby lay perfectly still, staring at him with unwinking gray eyes.

"Gray!" said Andrew aloud, startled from the remote prison of his grief. He leaned closer. Gray as the water of Loch Fyne, he thought. The homesickness which he had denied these two years sent a twinge of new pain into his consciousness. His daughter gazed up at him quietly, and after a while he experienced a feeling of solace. The eyes were like his mother's, the gentle Highland mother who had had the gift of second sight, and wisdom and pity for all things.

"Santa Fe —" said Andrew bitterly, and at the sound of his voice the baby suddenly smiled.

"Aye, 'tis a daft name for ye, small wonder ye smile." He repeated the name, and this time the last syllable echoed in his mind with a peculiar relevance. "'Fey!' There's a true Scottish word will fit you, for ye're fated — doomed to die as we all are, poor bairnie."

The baby gurgled, tried to kick against the tight-wrapped greasy blanket; thwarted, she protested tentatively, then fell asleep. Andrew continued to stare down at her.

When Ramona came back for the baby, she saw that the wild loco light had left the Señor.

"Bring Fey here once a week until she's weaned," he commanded in his halting Spanish. "After that I'll keep her."

"Fé — ?" questioned the woman blankly.

Andrew pointed at the baby.

"Ah —" said Ramona, and shrugged her fat shoulders. She picked up the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Mariner Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0544242181
• ISBN 13: 9780544242180
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Product Safety Manager; enquiries@harpercollins.ie; ; HarperCollins, Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper; Dublin 1; D01 C9W8; Irland