Acoma: A Novel of Conquest Paperback - 1999

Lana Moeller Harrigan holds a Ph. D. in Romance Languages. A linguist in Portuguese and Spanish, she was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Lisbon and has lived and traveled extensively in Luso-Hispanic speaking countries. She is an expert on the history and culture of the Colonial Southwest and lectures frequently on those subjects. A member of Western Writers of America and Women Writing the West, Harrigan is the author of two historical novels, "acoma, A Novel of Conquest," and" K'atsina, A Novel of Rebellion," and is currently at work on the third novel of her trilogy on Spanish Colonial New Mexico. In addition to writing, Dr. Harrigan serves as a study leader for the Smithsonian Institution's tours to Spain, Portugal, and the US Southwest, lecturing on Iberian and Southwestern history, culture and literature.
Language was fundamental to Harrigan's career. Exposed for the first time to Spanish during a trip to Mexico at the age of ten, Harrigan determined at that time to study languages in college. Her interest in language and other cultures drew the author to New Mexico and ultimately led her to research and write the story of the Hispanic conquest of the Southwest. Harrigan's study of paleography along with her background in Spanish and Portuguese allows her to read the sixteenth and seventeenth century historical manuscripts in the original archaic Spanish as one part of the extensive research for her novels. Harrigan's frequent travels in the Iberian Peninsula as well as in Mexico and South America serve as another source for her research. Harrigan divides her time between her home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Casa Dichosa, a large old house on the Sea of Cortez in San Carlos, Mexico, which she and her husband, and faithful dog, Gordita, have remodeled and where she holds writers' retreats.