Pale Truth (The California Chronicles #1) - Hardcover

Alef, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0970017413 ISBN 13: 9780970017413

Publisher: Maxit Publishers, 2000

Synopsis

Born into slavery in Georgia by a mother feared for being a voodoo queen, Mary Ellen is sent off to New Orleans by the plantation owners' wife to secure her education and financial future, and finds her destiny in San Francisco.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel Alef attended UCLA, UCLA Law School, the London School or Economics, and Cambridge University. Although he has published numerous articles in the field of law, this is Mr. alef's first novel. As a former lawyer, rancher,and CEO of a public company he draws on a wide field of experience and meticulous research to tell this story. Mr. Alef lives with his family in the Santa Ynez Valley, where he pursues his many interests including writing and teaching judo.

Reviews

Adult/High School-Mary Ellen, born a slave in Georgia, is light-skinned and intellectually extraordinary. As a young girl, she is taken under the wing of her childless mistress, who gives her an outstanding education and emancipates her upon adulthood. Belonging nowhere, but financially independent thanks to an inheritance from her white mentor, the young woman strikes out for San Francisco, risking the hazardous Panama crossing to reach a frontier where she can hope for new possibilities. There she passes as a white woman, secretly amassing a financial empire in the burgeoning economy of the Gold Rush, and finding her life intertwined with many of the historical figures who shaped California's history. San Francisco from 1849 to 1853 is a spectacular setting for a big novel, and Alef takes full advantage of the possibilities as he blends history with fiction. The protagonist is loosely based on a real person, Mammy Pleasants. She and the other characters are colorful, the story is engaging, and the presentation is impressive: excellent design, lavish period illustrations, and interesting afterword and time line-even an extensive bibliography. Strangely (and sadly), the prose is passable at best. Still, even though Alef isn't a great stylist, he tells a really good story that many teens will enjoy.-Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

California joined the Union in 1850; just in time for the state's sesquicentennial comes this big, ambitious and well-researched debut, the first in a planned historical trilogy from Santa Ynez valley lawyer Alef. In 1829, a light-skinned daughter is born to a young slave on a Georgia plantation. Rejected by her real mother, baby Mary Ellen is taken into the big house under the tutelage of the plantation owner's childless wife; before dying of cancer, sheen trusts the 13-year-old's future to a friend, Americus Price, leaving her a substantial inheritance and granting her freedom at age18. After years passing for white in a New Orleans convent school,Mary Ellen comes of age, visits Price's Missouri plantation and travels on to Cincinnati, where she encounters the abolitionist John Brown. By 1849, disappointment and trauma in Ohio lead Mary Ellen to seek a fresh start in California. On her way by ship, she nurses the Scotsman Thomas Brand back to health and assists the embittered ex-Manhattanite Colbraith O'Brien. The trio then make their way to San Francisco, where Mary Ellen, Colbraith, Brand and a large cast of minor characters enter the fast-growing town's rough politics and its burgeoning net of business endeavors, from real estate holdings to squabbling fire companies. Will strangers from her past wreck Mary Ellen's new life by revealing her racial heritage? Alef based his key characters on real people: an afterword, timeline and bibliography layout his historical sources. Readers will enjoy keeping track of Mary Ellen's complex life and the intricate dealings among the San Francisco figures she meets. Alef's prose, if hardly subtle, keeps the plot moving, and his settings are effective. This entertaining saga will leave many readers eager for the planned sequels.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This large but carefully plotted and certainly historically accurate novel celebrates the rich cultural heritage that has been the hallmark of California life. The story begins in 1829 in the state of Georgia, with the birth into slavery of an unusual baby--she has eyes of two different colors. The baby's name is Mary Ellen and her mother is credited with--or, more accurately, feared for--being a voodoo queen. Mary Ellen grows up the favorite of the wife of the owner of the plantation where she was born--to say nothing of also growing up beautiful. The plantation owner's wife places Mary Ellen in the hands of a male friend, for him to see to her education and to hold a sizable amount of money in trust for her future. So off to New Orleans Mary Ellen goes, but Missouri and Cincinnati follow as sites of her continuing education in life. But San Francisco is where her fortune awaits her, the sights and sounds of that young and raw city fairly wafting off these pages. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Maxit Publishers
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0970017413
• ISBN 13: 9780970017413
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 588