The White Dove: A Celebration of Father Kino
Jane Candia Coleman
In this stunning and unique work, the seventh book in High Plains Press’s prize-winning Poetry of the American West series, poet and novelist Jane Candia Coleman brings Father Kino, his extraordinary vision, and the people of his beloved Sonora Desert to brilliant life.
The Jesuit missionary, Eusebio Kino, arrived in Mexico in 1681, almost 100 years before the start of the American Revolution and two hundred years before the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral put its nefarious mark on Arizona history. What he found was a vast, often violent and inhospitable country, for the most part unexplored, its native people primitive, sometimes hostile.
Yet Kino, mathematician, cartographer, explorer, astronomer, architect, importer and breeder of cattle and fine Spanish Barb horses, and above all, priest, left a lasting imprint on Mexico and the American Southwest.
Poet Jane Candia Coleman steps inside the heart and mind of Father Kino and tells his story, from his beginnings Italy, to the luck of the draw which sent him to Mexico rather than to China where he longed to go, through his laying of the cornerstones of San Xavier del Bac Mission, “the White Dove of the Desert.”
"These poems are extraordinary in their simplicity and depth, and in
capturing the spirit of a Jesuit missionary. They also capture the austere
beauty of Sonora and Southern Arizona."
••Father William Stoeger, S.J.
"The White Dove. It is beautiful. Like a prayer."
•• Patricia Preciado Martin, prize-winning author
• 978-0-931271-83-0 • trade paper • 96 pp • $12.95 Order Now!