Secret of Old Blood:The Sandoval Sisters Mexican American war adultery diaries witches secrets slaves Santa Fe S. Ramos O'Briant history

The Secret of Old Blood

The Sandoval Sisters

Arranged marriages. A runaway bride.
Sisters. Adultery. Witchcraft. A Woman doctor. Male castration. Secrets.
The Sandoval diaries.

   When Alma flees with her young lover to Texas to escape an arranged marriage with a much older man, she sets in motion a drama that will put the sisters and their legacy at risk.

   Pilar, a 14-year-old tomboy, is offered as a replacement bride, and what follows is a sensuous courtship and marriage clouded by the curses of her husband’s longtime lover, Consuelo. She will stop at nothing, even the use of black magic, in her effort to destroy the Sandoval family.

   The Mexican-American war begins and the Americans invade Santa Fe. The sisters survive the hostilities from two important fronts-New Mexico and Texas.  Their money and ancient knowledge offer some protection, but their lives are changed forever.

The Diaries
A sampling

Oratoria:

   I entered the wide gates of the Sandoval compound a barefoot slave, but I soon became a favorite of doña Teresa, who was only sixteen and far from her family in Mexico City. Her father-in-law had traded for me — a bag of flour for a ragged peasant girl of five — after I had been captured by Apaches in Mexico. He brought me to this high mountain desert, to the City of Holy Faith, as a wedding present for his son, Estevan, and his bride, Teresa.

   She encouraged me to read the ancient diaries of the Sandoval heiresses, said to contain delectable recipes guaranteed to whet a husband’s appetite and keep him at home. The recipes were there, but so were their fears and ecstasies, their seductions and adulterous affairs. The diaries were cookbooks of love.



Tower and high walls around a Spanish hacienda

Alma in Texas:

  “There's a Mexican woman in Pollard's Corner?” I asked, incredulous. I’d been here for a year, and not heard a single word of Spanish.

   Reverend Slocum inclined his head, more a twitch than a nod, and focused on his meal. “Inesita Gomez married Gustav Beider, the baker. She stays to home most of the time, especially since the troubles. Most of her family went back to Mexico after they lost their property. Then when the Catholic Church closed, there was some talk of Beider moving out lock-stock-and-barrel.”

   “There was a Catholic Church? Here?”

   Not eager to abandon his meal, he laid down his fork and knife with a sigh. “Miz Pollard, history shows that two Papist countries ruled these here parts – first Spain, and then Mexico.”

ALMA WRITING ABOUT ORATORIA:

Oratoria gazed toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, named Blood of Christ by Spanish explorers, their snow-capped peaks visible above the twelve-foot adobe wall surrounding our hacienda. At twenty-nine, her hair hung in neat braids, and her face was the placid sea of flawless brown that I’d known my whole life. She looked like many of the servants in other households, but Oratoria’s outside said nothing of what was inside. She was the only one of us who’d read all the Sandoval diaries, those monstrous Spanish histories dating back for centuries, and the source of our power. Like their authors, she reserved all her emotion for the biting edge of her words.