Lieutenant Sherman and La Doña of Monterey

the long version

It is 1847: the celebrated Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman is a mere lieutenant, serving as adjutant to the military governor of newly-conquered California, foremost prize of the recent Mexican War. For the next three years Sherman will enjoy in an intimate friendship with the de la Guerra family of Santa Barbara and Monterey, especially with Angustias de la Guerra, La Doña of Monterey. This friendship, however, is severely tested during and after that brief war, since the de la Guerra family, like many Californios, intensely desire to keep California an independent country, free of both Mexican and United States control; yet the family also values their friendships with sympathetic Americans like Sherman and US Consul Thomas Larkin. So even while Doña Angustias and her brothers actively resist the American takeover, La Doña is still the charming ambassadress par excellence of her culture to the conquering Americans; she is as well the enchanting and intimate friend of Lieutenant William T. Sherman, who escorts her to dances and is dazzled by her at fiestas at the family hacienda, where Sherman lives for many months. Paramount, however, for Lieutenant Sherman through all these trials and amusements is that he must employ extreme strategies in order to resist his enchantment by La Doña Angustias, the magnificently competent and beautiful Doña of Monterey, whose de la Guerra family owns a half million of the finest acres in all California, and whose husband is dying.--