Overland: A Novel

In the dusty, windswept streets of Santa Fé, two women fight against circumstance. Clara Muñoz Garcia Van Diemen possesses striking beauty but faces financial devastation as an orphan, while her resolute Aunt Maria refuses to surrender to their circumstances. When an invitation arrives from Clara's estranged grandfather in California, a dangerous opportunity emerges: the promise of family fortune and a new beginning, yet requiring an arduous overland journey through treacherous desert. Lieutenant Thurstane, a young American officer stationed at the frontier post, becomes entangled in their fate, his feelings for Clara complicating an already precarious situation. De Forest captures a pivotal moment in American history: the Southwest still wild, the nation healing from civil war, and the western frontier beckoning with both peril and possibility. Written in 1871, this novel offers an intimate, unstinting view of the post-Civil War American West through characters who possess real agency and real fear, making their gamble across the desert lands feel genuinely hazardous.