Mount Shasta and Calistoga — Dewey Dempsey

This is the fifth book in the Qua Nie Saga and the last in Cycle One.

Qua Nie, his Samoan friend Uriah, his cousin Albert and Adoni, the Cherokee medicine man, are being led down the Klamath River in Oregon to Mount Shasta for the Bear Dance ceremony of the combined Maidu tribes. This is part of their continuing spiritual quest. They have just thwarted an ambush near what became Bend, Oregon. After the ceremony, they are led by some of the Maidu to what became one of the largest gold mines in the California gold rush and became known as Cherokee, California. Qua Nie and Uriah return to the Napa Valley to find radical change. Qua Nie finds that he is father to a son he cannot claim. They spent some time with a Jesuit waiting to open a school in Santa Cruz. They both continue to pass as White and to conduct cattle business and businesses in Sacramento and San Francisco. Qua Nie still burns to follow the Jedediah Smith Trail on to Coulter's Hell, now known as Yellowstone National Park. They sell the gold mine and the town businesses and arrange to lead a group of vaqueros with a herd of cattle back to Fort Nez Perces at the junction of the Snake River and the Columbia.
The book ends with Qua Nie pondering what responsibilities await him back at the Cherokee Naiton and what adventures will befall as they move through Blackfoot territory and among the geysers.
The novel was researched over several years and the author has ‘walked the land' where all of the action takes place.