The Golden Eagle. A Novel Based on the Fabulous Life and Times of the Great Conquistador Hernando de Soto, 1500 - 1542.
signed
1958 · New York
by Jennings, John.
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958. Second Impression. Signed by the Author on half-title. Octavo, red cloth & yellow boards (hardcover), 253 pp. Near-Fine in a Very Good+, mylar protected dust jacket with sunned spine and light edgewear. From dust jacket: As a boy Hernando de Soto was pledged to the service of Don Pedro Arias de Avila, a crusty old devil who sent de Soto to the University at Salamanca, and cared for him as if he were his own son. When he returned from the University, young Hernando met and fell desperately in love with Don Pedro’s second daughter, Dona Isabella. She was a lovely child, and a girl with a mind and heart of her own, yet Don Pedro disapproved, because of de Soto’s poverty, and insisted upon separating the lovers. When he sailed to take over his post as Governor of Nueva Catilla -- we call it Panama today -- he took Hernando with him, as captain of Dragoons. Dona Isabella he left behind, to look for a more suitable match. Don Hernando de Soto was no more than a lad when he first went out to the Americas. But there he learned the art of war and killing and cruelty under the expert guidance of such fiendish teachers as Don Pedro his patron, who executed Balboa despite the fact that he was already his own son-in-law, and Pizarro, the conquerer of Peru. He served in Panama and Nicaragua, in Ecuador, and in the high Andes of the Incas, and it was there that he came across the glamorous Inca woman Llayva Ima, to whom he almost lost his heart. When she died, in fact, he pledged himself to adopt and rear her daughter, Ama-Ama, in every way befitting a Spanish lady. When he returned to Spain, with a fortune far beyond even old Don Pedro’s most avaricious dreams, he found Dona Isabella still waiting for him... But underlying it all is the account of Hernando de Soto’s struggle to explore our southern forests and swamps and plains; his passage of rivers and mountains; the battles he fought along the way; and his final discovery of the great river [in Florida], the achievement which keeps his memory green today... (Inventory #: 51231ns)