A failed expedition to Florida from Cuba, gold seeking Conquistadors (ca 1519) are shipwrecked in Texas. After travail, the four learn survival. From Texas to Mexico on foot and among Indians and after a spiritual enlightenment they begin to travel and heal fellow humans across Texas and of Mexico.

Historical Fiction,Adventure,Epic

The narrator begins the story as an account to the King of Spain from a prison cell.

The four men navigate back to Europeans after a near decade long travail and privation, which witnessed betrayal, brutality, cannibalism (by Europeans), and finally an assimilation of the four sojourners with the Indians as changed men--intent on not subjugating native Americans.

Pre European Florida, Texas and Mexico

Yes

Internal Journey/Rebirth,Quest,Rebellion Against 'The One',Overcoming Monster/Villain,Voyage and Return

Philosophical Questions,Happy Ending,Meaningful Message

Nudity,Extreme Violence

Name: Cabeza de Vaca

Age: 30

Gender: Male

Role: Protagonist

Key Traits: Adventurous,Engaging,Faithful,Religious,Patriotic,Modest,Selfless,Visionary,Strong Moral Code,Naive,Heroic,Decisive,Charming,Gracious,Flexible

Name: Estevanico

Age: 30

Gender: Male

Role: Skeptic

Key Traits: Aspiring,Adventurous,Badass,Charming,Sexy,Underdog,Masculine,Blunt,Selfless,Complex,Faithful,Skillful,Funny,Romantic,Heartthrob,Honorable

Name: Pamfilio Navarrez

Age: 45

Gender: Male

Role: antagonist

Key Traits: Villainous,Narcisstic,Uneducated,Power Hungry,Sarcastic,Leader,Desperate,Confident,Clumsy,Aggressive,Greedy,Insecure

Name: Andres Dorantes

Age: 35

Gender: Male

Role: sidekick

Key Traits: Adventurous,Clumsy,Charming,Funny,Secretive,Sophisticated

After a failed expedition to Cuba as Conquistadors (ca 1519) and shipwrecked, a group four men must learn survival from Texas to Mexico among Indians and after a spiritual intervention begin to travel and heal fellow humans across Texas and of Mexico. It is a powerful redemption story, it is certainly a fish out of water tale, and it is the epic Christian story that counters the secular notion of the Gospel being foisted upon native peoples only with the notion of Conquest. That this purpose occurred outside Church and State of the day makes it the epic story. This treatment seeks in no way to emulate or borrow from the excellent 1991 Mexican film, Cabeza de Vaca written by Guillermo Sheridan and Directed by Nicolás Echevarría. Sheridan’s version draws on the account by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca but also secular scholars[i] who dismiss De Vaca’s spiritual base, namely, a fourteenth Century Catholic world view. Sheridan and Echevarría’s portrayal twenty-four years ago is of Cabeza as a convert to shamanism and departs from Cabeza’s La Relación and his Catholicity as it is portrayed by Alvar Nunez de Cabeza De Vaca himself in the “Account”. This treatment and then a script and ensuing film will tell the true account of Cabeza from his point of view: his faith as a Christian man when presented with unthinkable obstacles; his relation of being the first European (along with two Spanish colleagues and an African slave) to walk across North America.

BIO: James Ross Kelly lives in Northern California. He has been a journalist for Gannet, a travel book editor, and had a score of labor jobs — the in-between, jobs you get from being an English major. He retired as a writer-editor for the Forest Service, where he spent a decade in Oregon and Alaska, respectively. He started writing poetry in college on the GI Bill, and after college continued and gave occasional readings in the Pacific Northwest during the 1980s. His poems and stories have appeared in Westwind Review, (Ashland, Oregon), Open Sky (Seattle), Siskiyou Journal (Ashland, Oregon), The Sun (Chapel Hill, NC); Don’t Read This (Ashland, Oregon), Table Rock Sentinel, (Medford, Oregon), Poetry Motel (Duluth, Minnesota), Poems for a Scorpio Moon & Others (Ashland, Oregon), The Red Gate & Other Poems, a handset letterpress chapbook published by Cowan & Tetley (1984, Vancouver, B.C.). In the past three years Silver Birch Press (Los Angeles) so glad is my heart (Duluth, Minnesota), Cargo Literary, (Prince Edward Island, Canada), Fiction Attic, Rock and Sling (Spokane, WA) and Flash Fiction have all featured one or more of his stories. 'And the Fires We Talked About,' published by UnCollected Press of Maryland in 2020 is Mr. Kelly's first book of fiction. UnCollected Press has recently published 'Black Ice & Fire,' Mr. Kelly's first book of poetry in February of 2021.

Age: 18-34,35-54,55+,13-17

Target Gender: Universal

No

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