SANGRE DE CRISTO, (Volume I of Sunny of the Old Southwest)WARNING _ For the reader's information: This book (the shortest of the trilogy) has some emphasis on narrative style in its first chapters (about 1/3). This point is elaborated on below. Some, who prefer conversational dialogue, may find this part tedious at times. It is part of the creative intent and serves a purpose. [read more]DESCRIPTION _ Aaron Jefferson and his best friend Josh face the challenges of life in the Old West when they leave their postwar Shenandoah Valley for the Great Plains in 1865. Unanticipated trouble changes their lives, and they continue on to the Southern Rocky Mountains. In the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico they encounter: love, clash of cultures, struggle, hardship, spiritual discovery, and what it means to sacrifice for others.Interaction between Native Americans and the two young men, who have decided to try their hand at life in the still somewhat unspoiled West, brings new insight to them as they mature as individuals. The same can be said for the young Navajo woman who they meet, who is a refugee from the U.S. Government's cruel interment of her people.Young people matured fast on the American frontier. It had been true since the first European stepped off of a wooden ship into the West Atlantic surf and true for Native American youth ages before that. A hard, rugged, beautiful land that molded and honed you or killed you, America made men and women out of children in a heartbeat.SANGRE DE CRISTO is an adventurous love story set in tumultuous historical times, especially for the characters involved. While the main characters' cultures are in conflict, the reader observes their attempts to rise above the issues that divide the larger groups. EARLY NARRATIVE STYLE _ While relating interesting family history and new encounters and experiences for Aaron Jefferson as he and his friend Josh travel from the Shenandoah Valley to the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the early pages have a narrative style that some, who prefer conversational dialogue, may find tedious at times. The purpose of this beginning is to echo the tedium and tension the two young men faced in that crossing of the desolate Southwest and to place more emphasis on the importance of the later events in this first book. The long rides between the events that are related in the early pages can only be briefly described, and the irritable tension caused by the violent event on the Brazos can only be alluded to. But the tedium the reader experiences while waiting for the story to become more warm and engaging simulates those two emotions experienced by Aaron and Josh. The style also echoes the writing of the time the story is historically set.While most readers have enjoyed and even praised this book in its entirety, they have found that the last two thirds of this first book and the second and third volumes are even more engaging but needed the early narrative in volume one to complete the story fully.