A Welcome Addition to Any History Aficionado’s Library
Spain’s 18th-century incursion into California sets the scene for this historical fiction. Three compelling stories. A welcome addition to any history aficionado’s library.
Set between 1747 and 1793 and encompassing two continents, Five Hundred Moons tells the story of Spanish conquest in Alta California. Author Buzz Anderson introduces real-life actors Charquin, chief of the Quiroste tribe, Pedro Fages, commander of the Catalan Volunteers, and Father Junípero Serra and his Franciscan missionaries and surrounds with elaborately drawn characters like:
* Graile Carmona, born in Málaga Prison during the Spanish Gypsy Round-up, later Serra’s military bodyguard
* Drina, Graile’s talented sister, actress, and dancer, paramour to French naval officer and explorer, François Lapérouse
* Papina Carmona, arrested during the Great Gypsy Round-up, a Málaga Prison escapee who flees with her children to Bordeaux
* Sipa, elder shaman of the Quiroste people, mentor to Charquin’s daughter, Nayem
* Tiuca, chief of the Ichxentens, later head acolyte to Father Serra
* Nayem, Charquin’s daughter, sensitive and wise from a young age, destined to be a spiritual leader to her people
Perhaps the most impressive character in Anderson’s historic novel is Alta California’s sweeping landscape. His sumptuous descriptions of flora and fauna stimulate not only the visual but also the auditory and olfactory senses, eliciting a deeper appreciation for the immense natural beauty—preserved for thousands of years by the Costanoan Rumsen Ohlone people—which greeted the Spanish marching north in the “New World.”
Five Hundred Moons is an 814-page saga of “passion and sorrow, violence and spirituality, blossoming hope, and the search for timeless balance. Ultimately, it is a story of the resilience of love and the human spirit” (Edward C. Larson).
Part of the authenticity of Anderson’s story came from paying attention to his characters—who they are, what they represent in the story, and what they could possibly be feeling. His slow and simmering sensuality between principal characters Drina and Francois reads like feeling silk.
