Ramona

If I could write a story that would do for the Indian a thousandth part of what Uncle Toms Cabin did for the Negro, wrote Helen Hunt Jackson, I would be thankful the rest of my life.

Jackson surpassed this ambition with the publication of Ramona, her popular 1884 romantic bestseller.

A beautiful half Native American, half-Scottish orphan raised by a harsh Mexican ranchera, Ramona enters into a forbidden love affair with a heroic Mission Indian named Alessandro.

The pairs adventures after they elope paint a vivid portrait of California history and the woeful fate of Native Americans and Mexicans whose lands and rights were stripped as Anglo-Americans overran southern California.

Set from the first American edition of 1884, this Modern Library Paperback Classic includes Jos Marts 1888 prologue (translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen).