Jovita Gonzalez and Eve Raleigh's "Caballero: A Historical Novel," a milestone in Mexican-American and Texas literature written during the 1930s and 1940s, centers on a mid-nineteenth-century Mexican landowner and his family living in the heart of southern Texas during a time of tumultuous change.
After covering the American military occupation of South Texas, the story involves the reader in romances between young lovers from opposing sides during the military conflict of the US-Mexico War. The young protagonists fall in love but face struggles with race, class, gender, and sexual contradictions.
This work, long lost in a collection of private paper and unavailable until now, serves as a literary enthnography of South Texas-Mexican folklore customs and traditions as well as a feminist critque of rigid patriarchal culture.
With an introduction by Jose E. Limon, epilogue by Maria Cotera, and foreward by Thomas H. Kreneck.
JOVITA GONZaLEZ was and educator, folklorist, and historian who received her master's degree in history in 1930 from the University of Texas at Austin. She was a protege of J. Frank Dobie and a Rockefeller grant award recipient.
EVE RALEIGH is co-author Margaret Eimer's pseudonym. She was residing in Missouri at the time of her death in 1978.