Coates writes of legendary time

The California of 1842 was everything legend says it was—a bountiful, unspoiled gem, the perfect place in which to imagine one’s dreams coming true. Not yet part of the United States, it was also the prize coveted by many nations.

It is against this backdrop that Lawrence Coates, creative writing, sets his new novel, The Master of Monterey. Published in April by University of Nevada Press, the story tells of the brief but ill-fated occupation of Monterey, then capital of the Mexican territory of California, by U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet Commodore Thomas Jones and the crew of the National Intention.

Having heard rumors that the United States was at war with Mexico, Jones takes over Monterey in order to forestall other imperial powers such as France, Russia and Great Britain from claiming it and, no less importantly, to secure his place in history as a champion of democracy. His three-day occupation ends when he finds out that there is in fact no war, and he later is relieved of his commission.

“Though this was a real event, I used my imagination in the telling of it,” Coates said. The result is an interweaving of the stories of at least a dozen main characters—the commodore himself, the ship’s captain, the people ashore, the local hacienda owners and the native Indians.

The character of Jones follows a long literary tradition of the quixotic hero, at once comic and tragic, “full of wild and crazy imaginings of great deeds but frustrated by everyday reality and ultimately defeated,” Coates said.

Likewise, the other characters have their own ideas of what California might be to them. To each it offers that possibility so central to the American character of erasing one’s history and making oneself anew, an idea embodied in the concept of the West.

Coates offers a rich fresco of life at that time, complete with details so fantastic and colorful they could only be true, such as gruesome fights between grizzly bears and bulls tethered together, of elk hunts among herds so dense a rider could ride among them, pick out the strongest bull elk, lasso it and slaughter it with a knife. Or of open air dances on the haciendas in which the women sat in chairs against the wall while the men sat astride their horses in a circle around them, dismounting only to dance. “They were master horsemen, incredibly skilled with lassoes and horses,” Coates said.

In fact, “some of the most bizarre things in the book were real,” Coates said. In researching material for the novel, he read many original manuscripts and journals from the period, written in Spanish and French, which are now housed in the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley. “I tried to read as many firsthand, original accounts as possible,” he said.

The wondrous life he depicts is well served by the style of magical realism he employs in his writing.

Born in El Cerrito, Calif., Coates sets most of his work in the West because, he says, “You write the best about where you’re from and about which you have a certain depth of knowledge.”

His first book, The Blossom Festival, won the Western States Book Award for Fiction, the Utah Book Award and was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in literature, Coates joined the faculty of BGSU in 2001 after teaching at Southern Utah University.

His fiction and nonfiction has appeared in various publications, including The Missouri Review, Blue Mesa Review, The Long Story, The Chicago Tribune, and The Santa Clara Review.

Coates will give a reading at 7:30 p.m. April 24 at Prout Chapel as part of the College of Arts and Sciences Reading Series. Copies of the book will be on sale at that time.