This book has all the excitement of a true western, but I guess you could call it more of an “Eastern”. There is love, lust, and death; it also contains gunplay, dead hombres, sheriffs, and its fair share of bloodshed. This Eastern originates in upstate New York.

The main character is also a little different from the crusty old gunslinger you might be used to; there’s a reason this book is written a little differently. The main character is a young black woman named Julia Heady. It’s about her struggle from her home in New England through the coal mines of Pennsylvania, then continues her journey across the country to what is now Phoenix, Arizona.

There is conflict, love, and Apache Indian attacks even before she reaches “gold country”, meets Jacob Waltz, the Lost Dutchman, and learns about his famous gold mines (you’ll read about this in book four).

A great part of this book is an original story in chapters one and two, based on the actual history of Lazarus Heady. The night on the Hudson River changed his life and the lives of his family forever. While Julia Thomas actually was a black, female store owner in Phoenix during the 1860s, she didn’t actually come from New York.

Lazarus did, in fact, jump overboard to try to save the captain’s 12-year-old son during the winter storm during the first decade of the 1700s. What happened that night gave Lazarus his freedom from slavery and a tract of land in North Castle, New York, making him the very first black land owner ever in the United States.

In 1978, I found that the cemetery was buried under 250 years of heavy brush. After working with a local historian, the cemetery is now on the official New York State Historical Landmarks. You can view the actual cemetery and photographs of the headstones here: http://bit.ly/1XlPpLP

This true story was just too good to pass up, so weaving it into the overall makeup of another Secret of The Lost Dutchman was irresistible. Historical evidence has never been found explaining how Julia Thomas, a black woman in the 1860’s could own her own store; this story provides a plausible explanation.