The tinkling of guitars in the moonlight; the softly hummed words of a
Spanish love song; the sweet, liquid music of the bells in the mission
San Carlos De Carmelo; fleeting pictures of old Father Junipero
Serro-these and a hundred other rich memories flood the mind as one
unfolds the story of little Suzanna, a peon girl, poor, futureless at a
time when the Dons and the grandsons of the conquistadores were supreme
in California. You think of Ramona; the dust covered stretches of El
Camino Real-the King's Highway-appear before your eyes; you hear the
roaring of quaint, old-fashioned, muzzleloading guns, the clash of cold
steel; subconsciously you thrill to the deeds of valor, of sacrifice and
danger. You are in step with romance and adventure when it was in its
heyday in Old California. Red-lipped, smoky-eyed senoritas smile on you;
your nostrils dilate with ungent aromas of hot, golden brown tortillas,
or fragrant, steaming tamales; for you the clock has been turned back a
hundred years-you walk in a land that is gone, but in which fate played
as recklessly with the lives of men and women as it does in our own
world today.