Sign-In
Cart
Where Two Waters Meet: A Historical novel of the early days of Port Townsend, WA
Paperback
General FictionHistorical Fiction
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 29 2025
Pages: 268
Weight: 0.72
Height: 0.67 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Port Townsend, 1851. Where the Strait of Juan de Fuca meets Puget Sound, a schooner drops anchor in waters the S'Klallam have fished for millennia. The settlers aboard see an empty harbor waiting for civilization. Chief Chetzemoka sees something else entirely: a future he can glimpse but cannot prevent.
Elizabeth Morrison arrives with the first wave, a Boston widow seeking reinvention in the territories. She builds a customs brokerage, accumulates property, raises two daughters-and keeps a cipher journal recording everything the official histories will erase. The treaties broken before the ink dries. The village burned to make room for mansions. The systematic dispossession dressed up as progress.
Chetzemoka chooses accommodation over resistance, signing away his people's land in exchange for promises of fishing rights and reserved territory. It's a gamble on the long game-that words on paper might matter to someone, someday, when circumstances change. His son Joseph inherits that burden, waiting decades for the moment when the settlers' certainties finally crack.
That moment comes in 1890, when the railroad boom that was supposed to make Port Townsend a great city collapses into economic ruin. The speculators flee. Property values crash. And in the wreckage, possibilities emerge that didn't exist before.
Spanning forty-four years of territorial history, Where Two Waters Meet tells the story of American expansion through the eyes of those who built it and those who survived it. Based on documented events and featuring the real S'Klallam leader Chetzemoka-known to settlers as the Duke of York-this novel explores what happens when one community's prosperity requires another's destruction, and what it costs to remember what everyone else prefers to forget.
The S'Klallam people-the Strong People-never disappeared. Their nations persist on their traditional territories today.
For readers of Barkskins and Cloud Cuckoo Land, this is a story of those who fight to hold onto their place in a changing world.
Also from
Gomez, Ricardo
LatinX @ UW: Stories and photos of Latinos and Latinas at University of Washington
Gomez, Ricardo
Paperback
Echoes of Connection: A Century of Information and Communication Technologies: A Novel
Gomez, Ricardo
Paperback
Photostories: Applications of a Participatory Photography Methodology for Social Science Research
Gomez, Ricardo
Hardcover
Ecos de Conexión: Un siglo y medio de tecnologías de información y comunicación: Novela
Gomez, Ricardo
Paperback
Las Marcas No Se Borran: Cuatro generaciones de resistencia al borde del río
Gomez, Ricardo
Paperback
Todo por la Libertad: Antonio Nariño y el Nacimiento de Colombia
Gomez, Ricardo
Beltrán, Mauricio
Paperback
Book of Laments: A Novel of the Priest Who Fought the Spanish Conquest: Bartolomé de las Casas
Gomez, Ricardo
Paperback
Also in
Historical Fiction
James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales Vol. 1 (Loa #26): The Pioneers / The Last of the Mohicans / The Prairie
Cooper, James Fenimore
Hardcover
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
The Pirate Queen: A Novel from the New York Times Bestselling Author of the Frozen River
Lawhon, Ariel
Hardcover
The Moonlight Runner: A Gripping Historical Novel of Survival, Bravery, and Romance
Robards, Karen
Hardcover
The Amalfi Curse: A Bewitching Tale of Sunken Treasure, Forbidden Love, and Ancient Magic on the Amalfi Coast
Penner, Sarah
Paperback
The Pirate Queen: A Novel from the New York Times Bestselling Author of the Frozen River (Large Print Edition)
Lawhon, Ariel
Paperback
A Pair of Aces: Reese's Book Club (Large Print Edition)
Benedict, Marie
Murray, Victoria Christopher
Paperback
Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery: The Official Authorized Edition
Christie, Agatha
Paperback