Cities of Gold

Douglas Preston's Cities of Gold is a riveting account of his journey in the footsteps of Coronado, the legendary 16th-century explorer and conquistador who led the first European expedition through the American Southwest. Preston and a friend, Walter Nelson, set out on horseback across one thousand miles of vast deserts and unknown mountains retracing Coronado's search for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. Forced to battle extremes of heat and cold, impenetrable mesquite. Thickets, bad water, and paralyzing drought, they nonetheless find the country awesome in its scale and beauty - with much of it so untouched that it is recognizable from descriptions in Coronado's reports. Where Preston encounters various people - cowboys, ranchers, crazy old eccentrics - he listens to them talk about their lives, about growing up, and how the West has changed. His journey also takes him through a number of isolated Indian settlements, where he meets. Some of the actual descendants of the people who fought Coronado. At the heart of the book is Preston's search for a new understanding of that shocking moment when Europeans first fought Indians within the borders of what would become America - and the fatal consequences that resulted.