Synopsis
In The First Lady of Dos Cacahuates, Frieda Levie, a Jewish San Franciscan, moves to Dos Cacahuates on the Arizona-Sonora border to set up a new life with her new husband, Bennie. She learns the ways of frontier desert life--its customs, its deprivations--and becomes devoted to the life shes chosen.
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About the Author
Harriet Rochlin, a lifelong resident of Los Angeles, has been researching, writing, and lecturing on Jewish roots in the West for twenty-five years. Her highly regarded social history, Pioneer Jews: A New Life in the Far West, published by Houghton Mifflin, is currently in a ninth printing. The first part in her Desert Dwellers Trilogy, The Reformers Apprentice, was published in hardcover by Fithian Press in 1996, and in softcover in 1997. Of that work, novelist Merrill Joan Gerber wrote: Freida had no way of knowing that her early perseverance would illuminate a new way of living and thinking for future generations.
From the Back Cover
FROM SAN FRANCISCO TO THE ARIZONA WILD--
Her Orthodox Jewish father predicting shed soon beg to come home, on March 21, 1880, Frieda Levie married Bennie Goldson and left to become THE FIRST LADY OF DOS CACAHUATES.
A last-chance bride and a lonely pioneer groom bound for a desert outpost may sound like a traditional Western, but not for long. Frieda--sky-high ideals, navel-deep in frontier sludge--and her cohorts--native and newcomer--live in an Americanizing West never before depicted in fiction. Rife with colliding cultures, risky opportunities, and zealous seekers, conflict is inevitable. So is cooperation. In Dos Cacahuates (ca-ca-wah-tes)--a handful of flimsy shelters Bennie counts on transforming into a commercial center--Frieda suffers isolation, scarcities, floods, crime, disillusionment, and the pain of adapting to a radically different environment. Simultaneously, she discovers the pleasures of lovemaking, new languages-customs-companions, desert life, and self-reliance.
Inspired by actual people and events, The First Lady quivers with life. As the late Dr. Charles L. Sonnichsen, authority on Western literature, noted: Rochlin gets it all in--the harsh realities along with he shining illusions. But best of all, the juices of life flow in every man and woman. "Frieda Levie Goldson, the first lady of Dos Cacahuates, brings her passionate heart and her ethical intellect to this winning imbroglio of Old West Jewish adventure in a novel as impeccably crafted as it is delightful."--Norma Rosen, author of Biblical Women Unbound
"This memorable and moving book details the life of Frieda Levie Goldson, a pioneer bride bridging her known world and that of the harsh land of the Arizona-Senora border. An intimate account of western Jewish pioneering, The First Lady adds heart and pulse to the story of the West, a story full of hardship, faith, and love. This is a novel for everyone who loves blue skies, vast space, and the idea that love can endure beyond suffering. It is a story about family and its deepest roots. --Denise Chavez, author of The Face of an Angel
"I much admire Harriet Rochlin's latest work, The First Lady of Dos Cacahuates. Frieda and Bennie are as engaging a couple as one could meet in the pages of an historical novel; and Ms. Rochlin's command of her research--in the interest of fiction--is not only impeccable, but sensitive as well. The portrayal of Jews in this western setting could become either stereotype or caricature, but Rochlin invests her narrative, her people, and their lives with fully dimensioned freshness and energy." --Mark Jaffe, Mark Jaffe Books, Houghton Mifflin Company
"This headstrong romance frolics along through the wilds of Arizona, pausing only long enough to tumble its characters from high moral ground, and then reinstate them. Seldom is a book both hot--with believable characters caught in dilemmas that feel utterly familiar--and historical, with an attention to detail that comes from years of archival research. First Lady is both--a page-turner that leaves the reader edified, educated and longing for a sequel."--Cathy Luchetti, author of "I Do!"--Courtship Love, and Marriage on the American Express.
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The First Lady of DOS Cacahuates
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PAPERBACK. Condition: Fine. 1564742644 Very light cover wear. Pages are new. Seller Inventory # 1564742644NE