PENGUIN CLASSICS

THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF JOAQUÍN MURIETA

JOHN ROLLIN RIDGE (1827–1867), also known as Yellow Bird, was born in Georgia to a Cherokee father, who was murdered by a Cherokee leader for having supported the treaty that led to the Trail of Tears. After killing a man who had stolen his horse, Ridge fled to California, where he identified with Mexican Americans who had been displaced from their land by white settlers. He wrote for the San Francisco Herald, among other publications, and was the first editor of the Sacramento Bee. His only novel, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, was published in 1854.

HSUAN L. HSU is a professor of English at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Sitting in Darkness: Mark Twain’s Asia and Comparative Racialization and Geography and the Production of Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the editor of the Broadview Press editions of Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins by Mark Twain and Mrs. Spring Fragrance by Sui Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton).

DIANA GABALDON is the author of the multimillion-copy #1 New York Times bestselling Outlander series. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with her husband.