In this superbly researched World War II novel, award-winning writer Shepard captures the mood of remote Santa Fe, New Mexico, as it waits for the return of residents held in Japanese prison camps.

Winner of the 2016 IPPY Silver medal for West Mountain Best Regional Fiction, the beautifully researched story takes place in 1930 after the U.S. has usurped the very remote 1598 Royal Colony of La Villa de la Santa Fe de San Francisco d'Asis, founded by a small group of conquistadores and their Franciscan Padres, who came bringing both Christ's love to the heathen and a personal quest for riches. Not finding the wealth of either Mexico or Peru, this isolated colony stayed to eke out a subsistence living for three hundred years 1500 miles from Mexico City on vast lands granted as favors from...