Brutal Journey: Cabeza de Vaca and the Epic First Crossing of North America - Paperback

by Paul Schneider (Author)

Schneider's thorough research and vivid writing create a fast-paced, moving story, one that is difficult to believe and impossible to forget.
--The New York Times Book Review

A gripping survival epic, Brutal Journey tells the story of an army of would-be conquerors, bound for glory, who landed in Florida in 1528. But only four of the four hundred would survive: eight years and some five thousand miles later, three Spaniards and a black Moroccan wandered out of the wilderness to the north of the Rio Grande and into Cortes's gold-drenched Mexico. The survivors of the Narváez expedition brought nothing back other than their story, but what a tale it was. They had become killers and cannibals, torturers and torture victims, slavers and enslaved. They became faith healers, arms dealers, canoe thieves, spider eaters. They became, in other words, whatever it took to stay alive.

Author Biography

Paul Schneider, author of the highly praised and successful The Adirondacks (0-8050-5990-3), a New York Times Book Review Notable Book, and The Enduring Shore (0-8050-6734-5), lives with his wife and son in Martha's Vineyard.