The Trail through Mohawk: Adventures on a 19th Century Arizona stagecoach route

by John Culea, Janet Cruz (Editor), Heidi Dechief (Editor)

The crack of Arizona stagecoach driver Joe Adams’ whip in 1859 and cheers after he tricked the Army to get the first train across the Colorado River in 1877 are bookend moments in The Trail through Mohawk. One hundred fifty years later, schoolteacher Rachel Adams discovers hidden journals and begins a personal odyssey transcribing the story of family members she never knew existed. Joe Adams, married to a Cocopah Indian, finds life-threatening peril on the trail a constant companion, including face-to-face encounters with escaped convicts and the legendary Apache war chief, Cochise. The Trail Through Mohawk is a ride on a Butterfield Overland stagecoach, a gallop with the Pony Express and a battle in the Arizona desert during the Civil War. Page after page bring first-hand accounts of life, death, hardship, and courage in frontier Arizona. Through it all, Rachel Adams realizes that life’s questions today involve the same challenges her family faced as she struggles to keep the affections of Albert, the man of her dreams. The Trail through Mohawk is the first of three inspiring historical novels that bring real life people alive in a new and compelling way.

443 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 22, 2012

Reviews

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written account of a not very common setting during the Civil War. Arizona was still a developing territory with a bit of lawlessness. The main character, Joe Adams, starts of the book as a stagecoach driver where a shotgun driver was essential to ward off Native Americans, bandits and wild animals. He then becomes a scout looking for deserted soldiers. There are multiple attempts on his life which brings him to make a decision to become a Christian. Lots of historical facts to weave a story together with a main character that I looked up on the internet as I truly believed he was a person who had lived in the past.