HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY! You may download at no cost an Adobe PDF copy of my monograph RELUCTANT DAWN, A History of Padre Martinez, Cura de Taos at this link:
https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/dd19c44c-b5c5-4edd-8669-6a60e4eb4b23

If you wish to send me a free-will offering for your online ADOBE copy, you are welcome to do so at this address where I will be until the end of May: Rev. Juan Romero c/o St. Joseph Church – PO BOX 1709 – Big Bear Lake, CA 92315.

If you wish to have an autographed hard copy of the 2006 edition of book, please send to the above address your name and address together with a money order in the amount of eighteen dollars ($18) per book. Indicate to whom you wish the book(s) to be dedicated.

You may also order RELUCTANT DAWN through Amazon at this link:

RELUCANT DAWN is based on primary documents,in particular on the 1877 unpublished manuscript-Biography of Padre Martínez by Santiago Valdez, a close relative of the Padre. Valdez wrote it in Spanish, and Benjamin Read M. Read translated it into 19th century English. His younger brother Larkin Read, married to a relative of the Padre, beautifully copied the manuscript housed in the Ritch Collection at the Huntington Library near Los Angeles.

The Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio (now called the Mexican American Catholic College) first published my monograph in 1976. I published a second edition in 2006 on the occasion of the unveiling of the Padre Martínez bronze memorial at the Taos Plaza entitled “LA HONRA DE SU PAIS/The Honor of His Homeland”for the epitaph on his tombstone. The phrase was coined by his peers in the Territorial Legislature on the occasion of the Padre’s death in 1867.

I am pleased to make the text available, through this website dedicated to Padre Martínez, to anyone interested in the history and culture of New Mexico, especially to those with an interest in ecclesiastical history.

Fr. Juan Romero
Taos native, and
Priest of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles