Jubilee Trail

564 pp. 8vo. A novel of early frontier California, before the gold rush led to mass migration from the East. From the jacket: 'In 1844 a fashionable lady of New York was leading a neat, proper life. She went to elegant parties given by her mother's friends. She met polite young men, and everybody expected that she would marry one of them. The prospect appalled Garnet Cameron, full of life and yearning for adventure. No wonder Olive Hale, with his tanned face and unruly sandy hair, who seemed too big for her mother's dainty parlor, stirred her imagination and won her heart. Oliver was a trader. Every year he made the trek over the Jubilee Trail from California to Santa Fe, crossing the mountains and deserts by mule train. This year he had come to New York to buy goods, and next summer he was going to take the trail back to California. Here, surely, was all the adventure Garnet could want. The excitement began with their honeymoon in New Orleans. Oliver took her everywhere, even to the exotic theater called the Flower Garden. It was here that Garnet met the astonishing Florinda, whose destiny was closer to her own than she guessed. When Garnet reached Santa Fe she met men like John Ives, and Silky, and Texas - men such as she had never known before. They became principal figures in the life that lay ahead of her. She was with them when the mule train fought its way back over the harsh trail to Los Angeles and fate wove its surprising web around her. Jubilee Trail is a story of vivid people and stormy times. Gwen Bristow has written of the history of California as vitally as if it were happening today. Her story brings alive the era of the great ranchos - when California was still under Mexican rule but was also looked on as one of the Russian czar's outposts of empire - and the little town of Los Angeles, in the days when it was just a huddle of adobe houses by the side of a muddy creek. Against the brilliant panorama of one of the most exciting periods of American history, Garnet learned tragedy and treachery and despair. She learned how to meet life without compromise, and at last she learned the real meaning of love.' ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gwen Bristow (September 16, 1903 in Marion, South Carolina – August 17, 1980 in New Orleans, Louisiana) was an American author and journalist. Bristow became interested in writing while reporting junior high school functions for her local newspaper. After studying at Columbia University, she wrote for a number of literary magazines and journals. Eventually, she moved to New Orleans, and worked at the Times-Picayune. She became interested in longer forms of writing — novels and short stories — through her husband, screenwriter Bruce Manning, and published her first novel in 1929. Bristow reached the pinnacle of her career with the western romance Jubilee Trail, which became a bestseller in 1950, and was adapted to a moderately successful film in 1954. She continued to write novels and articles for magazines until her death in 1980.