The Smuggler Chief: A Novel
1864
In the sun-scorched ports and mountains of Chile, Leon Delbès lives by his own code: a smuggler who answers to no authority but the sea and his own cunning. When a religious procession turns to chaos and a young nun is thrown from her horse, Leon's instinct for danger becomes something more primal: love. Doña Maria y Soto-Mayor is bound by vows, yet the man who saved her life has awakened something she cannot pray away. But Leon's closest companion, Diego the half-breed Vaquero, carries his own burning secret a vendetta against the Soto-Mayor family that will bind all their fates together. Set in the vibrant chaos of Valparaíso and the lawless frontier beyond, this is 19th-century adventure at its most operatic: where every sunset promises danger, every embrace risks damnation, and the only law that matters is survival. For readers who crave romantic melodrama wrapped in exotic adventure.
