The Indian Lover

With a sweeping sense of history and landscape that contributed to making Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove a classic, and the precise sense of character and passion that made Cold Mountain so successful, Garth Murphy has written a brilliant saga about California in its last days as part of Mexico, and about the lives of those caught up in this moment of historical high drama.

Peopled with a sumptuous cast of characters, both real and fictional -- Indians fighting for their survival against the...