Description:
Consulting archives on three continents, including previously untapped sources and Garcés's extensive diaries and letters, long obscured by unyielding language and handwriting, Beer crafts a nuanced and thoroughly engaging account of this incomparable explorer, groundbreaking missionary, and central actor in New Spain's final sustained effort to expand its dominion into the lands that would become the American Southwest.
Brief description: Jeremy Beer is an independent historian and cofounder and CEO of the consulting firm AmPhil. He is the author of Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball's Greatest Forgotten Player.
Review Quotes: "Jeremy Beer's deeply researched and beautifully evocative study revolves around the impressive deeds of a too-little-known Spanish Franciscan, the friar and missionary Francisco Garcés. Readers who assume that all accounts of Spanish missionary efforts are tales of domination and cruelty toward native populations will find in the story of saintly Garcés and his interactions with the indigenous peoples of the Sonoran Desert a powerful challenge to their expectations." -- Wilfred McClay, Professor of History, Hillsdale College and author of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story