Joseph Vanzutphen

Child of Sonora Joseph Vanzutphen

Child of Sonora is the story of the lives of two 7-year-old boys in the Sonora Desert. The first boy lives in Scottsdale in 2017, and the second boy lives in the Tohono O'odham Territory in 1848. The history begins during the Mexican-American War, and takes the reader through Indian boarding schools, diseases (i.e., smallpox, cholera, diabetes) and the exploitation of Indian labor, all the result of European occupation. Both stories give insight into Native Americans' endemic struggle with the US immigration process, both historically and today. Scottsdale: After 7-year-old Colby loses his mother to a sudden cardiac arrest, he tempers his grief by naturally pouring all his love into Mel, who is not only his father but also his hero, confidant, and best buddy. Mel, too, assuages his sorrow for his lost wife with his strong love and constant companionship of his son; together they share the happenings of Mel's landscaping business, professional baseball, school, and all else in their lives. However, Mel is also dousing his aching grief with alcohol, and unknown to Mel, his precocious child is hurting deeply because of it. Then their lives change when Mel and Colby go on a mission to help Mel's landscape foreman fight deportation in the skewed form of justice rendered by US immigration policy. Tohono O'odham: After the 7-year-old boy loses both his parents to a massacre of his village by renegades from the US Volunteer Army in 1848, he is picked up by regular Army soldiers and taken to a Mission in the Gila Valley where he is made to learn the white man's ways. This tragic usurpation of his tribal ways leads to his life-long mission to not only redeem his ancient customs but also to pass them to future generations, and each of these succeeding generations has its own struggles with acceptance and injustice as 175 years of discrimination reaches all the way to the present day.