Join us as we welcome Peter Stark to the store for an author talk and book signing! We can hardly keep copies of his previous book Astoria on the shelves. This new book promises to engage readers as well.
THE LOST CITIES OF EL NORTE: CORONADO'S QUEST, THE UNCONQUERED WEST, AND THE BIRTH OF AMERICAN INDIAN RESISTANCE.
With the backing of the Spanish empire in 1540, Francisco Coronado set out for El Norte Misterioso to subjugate its people, steal its gold, and seize the land. Instead, Coronado encountered the true power of the American West––complex Indigenous societies, brutal deserts, starvation, cold, and countless other hardships that claimed 90% of his party's lives.
Coronado and his people traversed 2,500 miles of unmapped terrain, ranging across the present-day U.S. states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and finally Kansas. They were the first Europeans to gaze upon the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains; made first contact with the Puebloan peoples; crossed the Sonoran Desert and the Great Plains, where they encountered endless herds of bison and the nomadic tribes who followed them. After leading the largest exploring cavalcade ever assembled in the New World, wearing his gilded armor and bobbing plume, Coronado retreated back to Mexico City two years later accompanied only by a hundred or so hangers-on and carried on a litter, a broken man. America’s Southwest and Plains would remain unconquered for the next 300 years.
Author of NYT bestseller Astoria, Peter Stark puts his thrilling and diligent historical narration towards Coronado's quest and some of the earliest examples of Indigenous resistance. He is a National Magazine Award nominee and contributor to Outside, where he originally chronicled his Lugenda adventure. His work has also appeared in Smithsonian and The New Yorker. He is the author of Last Breath and Driving to Greenland and the editor of an anthology, Ring of Ice. Stark lives in Missoula, Montana.
