Immigrants: Dragon Tooth Gold - Volume 1 (Immigrants)

Dragon Tooth Gold, Volume 1-Immigrants, is the first book in a saga of the American West. The story follows the Callahan family from New York to Independence Missouri in 1843. Aaden and Anna raise four children and they leave on the Santa Fe Trail on the eve of the Civil War. The Dragon Tooth mine awaits discovery in the New Mexico Territory.

Publisher Marketing: CONTENTS Prologue - Lays the groundwork and the saga begins. First Nanosecond and Beyond - Genesis of the known universe. Proterozoic Pandemonium - Geological History and the birth of the Dragon Tooth Gold Mine. 190 Million Years Ago - Dinosaurs contribute skeletons to the Dragon Tooth Gold Deposit. The Extinction - The Last dinosaur to join the gold deposit. The First Find - First Immigrants cross the land bridge 10,000 years ago and settle on the gold mine but leave a curse behind that survives through the lore of the ages. Immigrants - Begins the story in 1843 with Aaden Callahan and Anna Mercier meeting at Columbia University and falling in love. The Departure - Aaden runs afoul of Anna's father and they leave New York on his brother's Whiskey Schooner, Blessed by the Wind. They take the Mercier servant family with them to include the teenage daughter, Lily. Pamlico Sound - The Blessed encounters slavers and pirates. Ports of Call - Hurricane while at anchor in Charleston Harbor. Trial by Storm - Blown of course for three days by a hurricane at sea. Revelations and Repairs - The women encounter a clairvoyant on the beach in Nassau. Jamaica - Whiskey trade and would be muggers killed and maimed. Cuba - Attempted rape of Anna's mother and sea battle with an Argentine frigate. New Orleans - Assult charges, crooked city judge and a clever jailbreak. Vicksburg -Travel by steam packet up the Mississippi. Saint Louis - Steamboat explosion and fire sweeps the city. Independence - Aaden homesteads, buys and frees slaves to work as partners in the lumber and brewery business. The First Born - The start of the Callahan family, the second generation of Callahans that come to life in Volume 2 of Dragon Tooth Gold The Assassin - Anna and her mother ruin a newspaperman in Jefferson City. The angry man hires a slave catcher to assassinate Anna. Marriage and Celebration - Anna's mother marries the blacksmith from Bath, NC. Pro-slave militants attempt to disrupt the wedding and are killed, their riverboat burned at the landing in Independence. The Professor - An associate from New York arrives and takes the Presidency of Anna's school. The Christmas Horse - Anna goes into labor while reading a story that makes her famous. Gives birth to twin boys. Suzette - Finally, the fourth child is a girl. Farewell Brothers - Nineteen years pass and comes the eve of the Civil War. Runaway - Suzette defies her grandmother and joins her brothers on the Santa Fe Trail. Epilogue - Sets the stage for Volume 2, Pioneers Publisher Marketing : Volume 1 of Dragon Tooth Gold begins the story of Aaden Callahan and Anna Mercier; two landed immigrants. They met while teaching at Columbia University in New York City. The year is 1841. The young Dr. Callahan woos and wins the heart of the smart and beautiful Anna. Their courtship isn't easy. Anna's abusive and dominating father doesn't approve and works through his connections as an investment banker to have Aaden fired from the University. Their relationship turns deadly when Anna's father challenges Aaden to a duel to settle the matter with deadly force. Aaden embarrasses Anna's father beyond repair in front of thousands of spectators in Faculty Park, across the street from the front gate of the University. Losing the duel and missing an earlobe, the banker's world crumbles around him. He takes his life in a drunken stupor when he finds his accounts frozen and receives divorce papers from his wife's lawyers. Aaden and Anna are spirited away from New York on his younger brother's whiskey schooner Blessed by the Wind . The Blessed is no ordinary schooner. Armed and deadly they fight off pirates in Pamlico Sound and take aboard a blacksmith and his apprentice slave who is his adopted son. They encounter a clairvoyant in Jamaica encounter more troubles having to fight an Argentine frigate on their way to New Orleans. Anna's mother settles in St. Louis and establishes The Black Freedom League. Aaden though is eager to homestead further west. He takes his wife and the servant family from St. Louis to Independence, Missouri, where there is land to homestead and a future to carve out of the wilderness. There, he establishes an empire partnering with blacks he buys and frees to take up homesteads around his holdings. Aaden spends his years building his lumber and brewery business. Anna founds a school in Independence for children of all colors and creeds. The abolitionist culture they create causes many problems the pro-slavery dominated state resulting in conflicts with slavers and even an assassination attempt. Aaden and Anna raise four children. Eli, the first, and twin boys, Jacques and Roland, and then finally a girl, Suzette. As the nation looms toward civil war, Anna yields to pressure from her mother and allows her boys to join the Army Supply Service. The post commander at Fort Leavenworth promises to keep the boys close to home. After a tornado sweeps through the lumber mill and brewery, however, the boys take a contract to join a wagon train all the way to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Suzette defies her grandmother who wants to take her on a clipper ship around the horn to Los Angeles and runs away to join her brothers on the trail west. Contributor Bio: McGrew, Kent J Kent McGrew, born at the end of WWII and raised by immigrant grandparents in the Sacramento Valley, began his mining career by accident at the age of fourteen. His father, the mechanical genius, was drawn into mining partnerships, building small processing plants for a share of the action. Having lost their ass three times by the time he was nineteen, he finally struck it rich enough to land at Montana School of Mines where he miraculously earned a Master's Degree in Mineral Dressing Engineering despite two years of hard living in Butte, Montana, working underground in the copper mines, and a three-year interlude in the US Army. To the credit of his first wife, Sandy Louch - the girl down the street, he aced the last three years of his education. All in all, he remains working at his profession for sixty years going to every continent on the planet except Antarctica, where he literally missed the boat due to a crashed tour plane the week before he arrived in New Zealand. From the tops of the Andes to the jungle and savannas of Africa to being part of the first delegation into China, Mr. McGrew has spent his days in the mastery of the science of his profession, solving mining and environmental problems. When asked where he is from - North America, when asked where he works - Everywhere. Simple answers to complex questions. Bogged down in technical papers, in the late '80s he created the pen name "Auntie GEM" (GEM is the acronym for Government, Education, and Mining - a subcommittee of the Society of Mining Engineers). His articles were carried by the Lead Daily Call and mining advocates syndicated the popular articles to all the weekly newspapers across North and South Dakota. Auntie educated readers in a humorous way about various aspects of the mining process blending in the rich the history of the area, helping to ease the tension of anti-mining initiatives in South Dakota at that time. Although "Auntie" probably wouldn't have approved, he also published in 1994 his Five Axioms of Mining Scams, several of which appear in Dragon Tooth Gold along with some new scams his research has uncovered along the way. Mining in South Dakota abruptly ended for him upon learning that Aspen trees contributed to his late, but unlucky find, of asthma. But at least it wasn't tuberculosis. Still, a friend suggested Arizona for its good air, and 30 years later he is still living under, above and around the mining district of Congress, Arizona with his beautiful wife, Sally. And he continues to mine, mentor and teach, a man in love with his profession. He was actively involved in the construction of Congress Elementary in 2000 and still works at the administration of the school district, bringing quality education to the children of rural Arizona. Besides the refreshing break from fifty years of technical writing to bring his readers Dragon Tooth Gold, he now trolls the library for each nugget of gold mining fact as he continues his quest to bring readers with him to his beloved American West. Contributor Bio: Tahtim, Ann Ayliffe Tahtim Ann Ayliffe is an educated writer having graduated from the University of New Mexico with a degree in Creative Writing. She works as owner/operator of the Spring Creek Company and Tulsa Granite in Wilburton, OK. Contributor Bio: Lorreta, Sue Cummins Mrs. Cummins is retired and lives in Boise Idaho.

Format: Hardcover | Pages: 286 | Publication Date: 2019-02-07