If I could write a story that would do for the Indian a thousandth part of what Uncle Tom’s Cabin did for the Negro, wrote Helen Hunt Jackson, I would be thankful the rest of my life. Jackson surpassed this ambition with the publication of Ramona, her popular 1884 romantic bestseller. A beautiful half Native American, half-Scottish orphan raised by a harsh Mexican ranchera, Ramona enters into a forbidden love affair with a heroic Mission Indian named Alessandro. The pair’s adventures after they elope paint a vivid portrait of California history and the woeful fate of Native Americans and Mexicans whose lands and rights were stripped as Anglo-Americans overran southern California. Set from the first American edition of 1884, this Modern Library Paperback Classic includes José Martí’s 1888 prologue (translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen). | Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson, Paperback | Indigo Chapters