The Barnes & Noble Review
In the 16th century, Catholic Spain -- the sponsor of Christopher Columbus and colonizer of Cuba, Mexico, and much of the future United States -- explored and exploited the New World more than any other nation, under the banner of "Christianization." Historian Reséndez's splendid account shows that pious Spain's true desire was gold, exemplified in Hernán Cortés's devastating conquest of the Aztecs, after which breathtaking riches were shipped back. In the same vein, ambitious explorer/conqueror Pánfilo de Narváez mounted a massive expedition to Florida in 1528, which included Royal Treasurer Cabeza de Vaca. A Caribbean hurricane drove the flotilla 900 miles off course, and after landing, the Spaniards began an ill-fated overland search for gold. Only 4 out of 300 would survive the journey, including Cabeza de Vaca. His epic, nightmarish journey in the New World included a crossing the Gulf of Mexico by raft, fighting with hostile Indians, resorting to cannibalism, being taken as a slave, becoming a "medicine man," and walking from Texas to Mexico. Reséndez's tirelessly researched and picaresque narrative describes every step of this dramatic survivalist adventure, while providing insightful background on topics like 16th-century navigation and Indian cultures. A Land So Strange will make you appreciate the comforts of home.
--Chuck Leddy
From the Publisher
In 1528, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong: Delayed by a hurricane, knocked off course by a colossal error of navigation, and ultimately doomed by a disastrous decision to separate the men from their ships, the mission quickly became a desperate journey of survival. Of the four hundred men who had embarked on the voyage, only four survived-three Spaniards and an African slave. This tiny band endured a horrific march through Florida, a harrowing raft passage across the Louisiana coast, and years of enslavement in the American Southwest. They journeyed for almost ten years in search of the Pacific Ocean that would guide them home, and they were forever changed by their experience. The men lived with a variety of nomadic Indians and learned several indigenous languages. They saw lands, peoples, plants, and animals that no outsider had ever before seen. In this enthralling tale of four castaways wandering in an unknown land, Andrés Reséndez brings to life the vast, dynamic world of North America just a few years before European settlers would transform it forever.
Entertainment Weekly
Resendez's story is so riveting you'll wonder why so many history books ignore it.
Dallas Morning News
[W]ell-informed, well-written, well-researched and well-suited to providing a new perspective on one of the oldest of American stories.
Miami Herald
[Resendez's] voice is original, his writing lucid and gripping.
Wall Street Journal
Resendez ... shows how Cortez, de Soto and other would-be conquistadors schemed for their kingdoms in the New World like investors jockeying for IPOs.
Texas Monthly
[I]t is Resendez's clever rewriting of his ordeal--as a survivor's tale--that is most memorable.
The Scotsman
An extraordinary adventure story . (which) offers a very different sort of paradigm for Europe's encounter with the Americas.
The Washington Post Book World
Once you start this book, it's nearly impossible to put it down.
The Times (U.K.)
Resendez's brisk historical narrative cries out for novelisation.
Financial Times (U.K.)
Resendez tells this gripping story with zeal. It is impossible not to be swept along by his enthusiasm.
The Washington Post -
Carolyn See
When you read a wonderful book, you can't stop talking about it, and so this past week I've been going on and on to friends about a terrific story…A Land So Strange is crammed with scholarship; there are 70 pages filled with footnotes and suggestions for "further reading." And yet it reads like the most gruesome pulp magazine story, so full of mishap and mad misadventure that, as I went on and on about it to friends, invariably they'd say, "Wait! Is this fiction or nonfiction?" It's almost too much to be believed…Once you start this book, it's nearly impossible to put it down.
Publishers Weekly
In 1528, 300 conquistadores embarked on the ambitious mission of colonizing Florida. They all disappeared. Eight years later, a band of Spanish slave-traders were rounding up their fleeing human cargo in northwest Mexico when they espied a group of men who appeared to be natives approaching them. One was white. Just as astonishingly, a companion of his was African. Who were these strange figures? They, and two others, were the last survivors of the lost expedition. Their march across Florida, their voyage on spindly rafts across the Gulf of Mexico, their captivity in Texas and their trek across the southwest to the Pacific coast form the backbone of Reséndez's riveting account of the epic journey. The author, a history professor at the University of California-Davis, tells the tale from the Spanish, African and Indian points of view: Native Americans were just as amazed by the original visitors as the visitors were by them, and Reséndez focuses on how the interlopers remade themselves as medicine men and made sense of "social worlds other Europeans could not even begin to fathom." Told from an intriguing and original perspective, Reséndez's narrative is a marvelous addition to the corpus of survival and adventure literature. 15 illus, 16 maps. (Nov.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Elizabeth Salt
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Library Journal
Reséndez (history, Univ. of California, Davis) chronicles the adventures of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who, along with three other survivors of the ill-fated Pánfilo de Narváez expedition of exploration, spent over eight years in what is now the American Gulf Coast region and northern Mexico between 1528 and 1536. The author provides excellent background information about the preparations for the expedition, and its progress from Spain to Hispaniola to Cuba and eventually to Florida, where the explorers became separated from their ships and were lost in the wilderness. Reséndez creates a gripping narrative of one of the most amazing survival stories of all time, basing his work upon the geographical descriptions of Native American cultures in Cabeza de Vaca's own writings, published in Spain in 1542. We follow the gradual migration westward of Cabeza de Vaca and his companions, first as slaves of various groups of indigenous people and later as respected shamans and healers who eventually encounter Spanish conquistadors in northern Mexico. This excellent account is highly recommended for U.S. and Mexican history collections in academic and large public libraries.
Kirkus Reviews
Delightful retelling of the incredible journey of a castaway Spaniard who was in turn enslaved and befriended by Native Americans. Resendez (History/Univ. of California, Davis; A Texas Patriot on Trial in Mexico, 2006, etc.) aims to fill in some gaps in the Narrative published in 1542 by Alvar Nu-ez Cabeza de Vaca, royal treasurer of a New World expedition who vividly recounted his unanticipated eight-year sojourn in the wilderness. Aiming for a river just north of the portion of Mexico where Hernan Cortes was busily plundering the Aztecs, the fleet commanded by Panfilo de Narvaez was carried off course by the Gulf Stream (unknown to contemporary navigators) and landed mistakenly on the west coast of Florida in April of 1528. Half the expedition, including Cabeza de Vaca, took off on foot along the coast to find the legendary Rio de las Palmas, not realizing they were on the wrong side of the Gulf of Mexico. After a series of dispiriting misadventures, they built rafts that washed up on different parts of the Texas shore, where the men either perished or were taken captive. Enslaved for years by an indigenous Texas tribe, Cabeza de Vaca eventually escaped with two other Spaniards and a native Moroccan slave, Estebanico. Knowledge of the land gleaned from living among the Indians helped them survive as they walked all the way to the Pacific coast, and their rudimentary medical skills enabled them to perform what seemed like miracles of healing to admiring Indians along the way. The castaways finally reestablished contact with Europeans in 1536-and their status as healers quickly diminished. Resendez proves a patient storyteller, employing effective prose hand in hand with the tools of ascholar, including many maps, excellent footnotes and a terrific Further Reading section. The experiences of one of the first outsiders to see the American Southwest still prove fresh and pertinent. Agent: Susan Rabiner/Susan Rabiner Literary Agent
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