On Her Way Home Book

Frazzled Family Ties and Tin Horn Justice
in the Arizona Territory

Rochlin offers a fascinating tale of the Old West from a Jewish perspective that is not often found in books, while her expertise in early Arizona life will appeal to all western aficionados.
—Booklist, American Library Association

Rochlins Desert Dwellers Trilogy combines authentic details of Jewish settler life, colorful characters and...enough period charm, crackling storytelling and priceless details to satisfy devotees of both wild west lore and Jewish history.
—Publishers Weekly

Frieda faces a difficult journey, harsh lawmen and a trial that tests both womens ingenuity and strength. Rochlins in-depth research offers a vivid, compelling picture of life in 1880s Arizona.
—Edith Broida, Book Club Facilitator, Farmington Hills, Michigan

Frieda Goldson and her husband Bennie live in Dos Cacahuates, on the Arizona-Sonora border. Frieda is about to give birth to their third child when they receive the news that Friedas fourteen-year-old sister, Ida, has been kidnapped by a surly murderer named Jed Pearson, somewhere in the wilds of the territory. Frieda hires the services of a garrulous, greedy sheriff, who hunts down the murderer and brings him, and the captive Ida, to justice.

Frieda hurries to Nogales to settle with the sheriff and bring her sister back to Dos Cacahuates, but is dismayed to learn that Ida has fallen under the spell of the tight-lipped Pearson, and is carrying his child. Ida is now considered an accomplice to Pearsons bloody murders, and the scene shifts to Prescott, where the couple are tried in a tense courtroom drama.

On Her Way Home, the third novel in Harriet Rochlins acclaimed Desert Dwellers Trilogy, is good-hearted, action-packed, and full of the rugged frontier spirit of Arizona in the 1880s. Told from the viewpoint of a strong-minded young Jewish woman, this western has a cast of fresh and believable pioneer characters—women, Jews, Mexicans, Chinese, Papagos, and Anglos from many segments of American society, from horse-traders and mule-drivers to pompous politicians.

Praise for Harriet Rochlins Desert Dwellers Trilogy

Rochlins Desert Dwellers Trilogy combines authentic details of Jewish settler life, colorful characters and...enough period charm, crackling storytelling and priceless details to satisfy devotees of both wild west lore and Jewish history.
—Publishers Weekly

Rochlin is a superb interpreter of Jewish types and Jewish activities in the West, and her talents as a writer are impressive. She gets it all in—the harsh realities along with the shining illusions, shame and sin along with joy and triumph, courage and hope along with despair—but best of all, the juices of life flow in every man and woman.
—C.L. Sonnichsen
Author of From Hopalong to Hud: Thoughts on Western Fiction

Harriet Rochlins On Her Way Home is one great story, deftly written, sure to become an instant classic. This is life as it still is; this is love as its meant to be. Rochlin combines a page-turning historical courtroom thriller with a passionate rendering of family, misfortune, and faith. She gives us a story powerful enough to apply to our contemporary life with detail enough to make us believe weve stepped back in time. Most importantly, through the Levies and Goldsons passion and pain, Harriet Rochlin pierces every heart, giving back a slice of hope and history we never knew we lost.
—Jane Kirkpatrick
Award-winning author, No Eye Can See
FLAP COPY: Historian/novelist Harriet Rochlin, a native of Los Angeles, www.rochlin-roots-west.com, has spent three decades recording in fact and fiction the lives of Jews, women, and other little-known westerners. Her landmark social history, Pioneer Jews:
A New Life in the Far West (Houghton Mifflin), in print for sixteen years, was recently released in an updated edition. The first two volumes in her extraordinary Desert Dwellers Trilogy, The Reformers Apprentice and The First Lady of Dos Cacahuates, were published by Fithian Press/Daniel & Daniel.

Hard Times, Frazzled Family Ties, and Tin Horn Justice
in the Arizona Territory

Six years in Dos Cacahuates, five failed businesses, a third child on the way, and Bennie still wont budge. Nor will Frieda, until catastrophe strikes. Her sister Ida, a dazzler at fourteen, comes to visit, and is invited by cultivated easterners on a scenic wagon tour. En route, the hired hand Frieda recommended kills the easterners and kidnaps Ida.

When the Yavapai County sheriff arrests the missing suspects, Friedas in for more bad news. Terrified of and controlled by her captor, Idas filthy, foul-mouthed, pregnant, and headed for jail. Now Frieda must wean Ida from her captor and coach her through two murder trials. Blamed by her San Fran-cisco family, at odds with her husband, misused by corrupt public officials, and shunned by Prescotts wary Jewish elite, strong-minded Frieda Goldson learns where and with whom she belongs.

On Her Way Home, the third novel in the acclaimed Desert Dwellers Trilogy, is set in the tumultuous 1880s. Friedas determination to return Ida to her parents takes her from the fringes to the center of territorial society and thrusts her into dealings with Arizonans of diverse cultures, occupations, classes, and moralities. Authentic and exciting, this is western historical fiction at its best.