Remember the Alamo

In San Antonio in May 1835, political talk fills the streets as the prospect of war reaches into family life. Amelia E. Barr introduces Dr. Robert Worth, an American physician who has lived in the city for twenty-seven years and married Dona Maria Flores. His close bond with their daughter Antonia brings the story from the crowded public squares into a household where national loyalties and religious convictions can pull in different directions.

This historical novel sets domestic tensions against the Texas Revolution and the siege of the Alamo. When Antonia calls her father home, his confrontation with Fray Ignatius turns questions of faith into a struggle over authority within the family. Descriptions of mission buildings, gardens, clothing and street crowds give the opening its particular sense of place. Readers interested in frontier fiction can find both the public atmosphere of an approaching conflict and the private arguments it intensifies.