JOURNEY TO THE SUN

The remarkable narrative of Junipero Serra, the intrepid priest who led the Catholic Church into California in the mid 18th Century and a fascinating, overlooked foundational story of America.

2013 will mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Mallorcan Franciscan who ventured into the New World and become a pivotal figure in an often overlooked foundational story of this continent. While readers know well the Eastern Seaboard's Purtians and the Mississippi's French, the story of the expansion of Spanish power into California and the central role of Serra through his massive cultural project of the missions is one waiting to be told. Astoundingly, there has not been a major biographical treatment of Serra in more than 50 years. Orfalea has at once a poetic and precise grasp of his subject matter--combining biography, cultural history, and travelogue--and he wades forcefully into Serra's colorful story with compelling results. With the increasing Latinization of American culture, the mestizo nature of this alternative founding story and Serra's proper credit within it will continue to be hotly debated, as it was during Serra's beatification by the Catholic Church in 1988. One step from sainthood, yet separated by miles of questions, Serra is a ripe subject for his own biography.

Orfalea was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and educated at Georgetown University and the University of Alaska. He is the author of eight books, the most recent of which are the short story collection The Man Who Guarded the Bomb (2010) and Angeleno Days (2009). The recipient of many awards for his writing, Orfalea's Angeleno Days has won the 2010 Arab American Book Award and has been named a Finalist for the PEN USA Award in Creative Nonfiction.