Joaquin Murieta

I think I'm going to take a little different approach to this post and talk about the author....I had never heard of Joaquin Murieta and what his story is, nor did I know who John Rollin Ridge was. I have a horrible habit of Google(ing) things as soon as I don't know something or feel uncertain. This was no different, I googled Ridge and found out that he was American Cherokee and how his family signed their tribes removal from Georgia, this immediately raised some questions for me. Why would he want to write about Joaquin Murieta? It seems that he ended up in California for the gold rush and heard stories about Joaquin Murieta, the details after the basic facts seem to get sketchy and it starts to get hard to separate the myth of Murieta and real life. Maybe this is why Ridge decided to write about an out law, to clear the air and set the record straight or maybe the renegade lifestyle appealed to Ridge and gave him some sort of creative muse.

Either way this story seems to be really interesting. I read somewhere that Joaquin Murieta was the Mexican or Chilean version of Robin Hood. I guess you could say that, maybe after I read on I will feel differently about the book and the character.