Daughter of Madrugada

Cesa de Haro loves the land—the vast and beautiful Rancho del Valle de la Madrugada, the Ranch of the Valley of the Dawn—where she and her family live. It’s where Cesa was born, the only home she has ever known, and the place where her mother died eight years ago. The ranch is Cesa’s world.

But that world is threatened when Mexico loses the 1846 war with the United States. Upper California, and the de Haro family’s ranch with it, now belongs to foreigners—the Americans. Each day more of them arrive in California, hungry for gold and for land. Now it is up to Cesa to assume her mother’s role as mistress of the ranch and help to preserve her family’s way of life. But will the sacrifice it requires be more than she’s willing to make?