Presented by Catherine Lopez-Kurland
To view her YouTube presentation, please click here

Claudio and Anita
A Historical Romance of San Gabriel’s Early Mission Days by Maria S. Lopez de Cummings
Published by J.F. Rowny Press, Los Angeles, California, 1921

This is a story about Don Francisco Lopez, the author's father, who loved to tell his children stories and tales from his youth, especially about his grandfather, Claudio Lopez, the hero of this narrative.
The introductory note by John Steven McGrath, author of “The Mission Play,” states:
The pages of this book will tell a story of old San Gavriel. It is a true tale, and therefore the more alluring and fascinating because it is still the fact that “truth is stranger than fiction.”
But it still remains true, also, that it is a high and great art to clothe truth in that shining garb which fiction has immemorially worn to attract lovers to her train. And you will find when you have read this story that Mrs. Cummings is a new master of that old art of clothing truth in fiction’s shining garb.