Cookesville U.S.A.

Cookesville, U.S.A. is a fictional western town whose story, location and peoples have been ripped from the pages of history. From Santa F, New Mexico to the goldfields of California in 1850, to the settling of Cookesville in California's Central Valley, its colorful characters bring to life the true drama of westward expansion. 

Cookesville introduces readers to many historic characters, weaving together fictional story lines with dramatic history. For instance, in the crossroads which was Santa F of 1846, Burns highlights the life and saloon of the historic character, Doa Gertrudis Barcel, or "La Tules," as the people of Santa F called her. Here, the flavors of the Old West and Spanish cultures combine to take readers on a whirlwind adventure and romance, the backdrop of which is the Mexican-American War, 1846-48.

Moving on from Santa F, newly-wed Frank Cooke experienced the early days of the Gold Rush in California, in the chapter which explains, "How the White Man Took the Land...Again!" Working his claim, Cooke becomes a very wealthy man, who nevertheless experiences the dangers of vigilante law. He and his entourage of Native Americans, Mestizos and Chinese eventually retrace his original route back to the southern San Andreas valley. There, he and his family settle by a river they humbly name the Cooke River, creating the town of Cookesville.  

This California central valley city embodies the struggles that ran strong as the state of California came to life in 1850, bypassing the process of organizing as a territory and racing to become a free-soil state. Encompassing lands which paralleled both the previously delineated North and South during the antebellum period, it became an instant combination of numerous races, mixed faces and outlooks. The passions which typify the goals of each ethnicity can be witnessed in its early development. Paradoxically, the spirits of the Old South and the Antebellum North compete on this western soil.  

The result of these equal but opposite visions would lead to violent confrontations. Readers learn the backstory of the peoples who originally settled Cookesville, following their offspring and their relations into the 20th and 21st centuries, along with the influence of new in-migrating peoples. Their red-hot relations and stories are compelling, exciting, exotic and sensual; and though they are fictional, they are solidly based upon real characters. You won't want to miss a single epoch or individual story line. Cookesville exemplifies not only how the West was won, but how the spirit of survivalism was essential in uniting cultures-on a local and national level.  

In "Cookesville, USA", Sarah Burns has done what all great historians do -- show us that the past is alive and well and living right here in the present.&nbs...