Ramona

Ramona, a novel written by Helen Hunt Jackson (1884), is the story of a part-Scottish and part-Native American orphan girl growing up and getting married in Southern California, suffering racial discrimination and hardship. Originally serial in the Christian Union on a weekly basis, the novel became immensely popular. Overall, it has had more than 300 printings, been made into three film version, and has been performed as an outdoor play annually since 1923. The impact the novel had on the culture and image of Southern California was enormous. Its romanticization of Mexican colonial life gave the region a unique cultural identity and its publication coincided with the arrival of railroad lines to the region, bringing in countless tourists who wanted to see the locations in the novel. Jackson's novel is set in Southern California, shortly after the Mexican-American War. It is about a part-Scottish and part-Indian orphan girl, Ramona, who is raised by Señora Gonzaga Moreno, sister of... full article at wikipedia