The Search for Pedro's Story

The Search for Pedro's Story recreates the life experiences of Pedro P res, a leather jacket soldier in the Spanish colonial army in eighteenth-century Texas.

Each chapter begins with a signpost artifact related to one of Pedro's roles--soldier, horseman, explorer, guard, spouse, messenger, and cowboy--and ends with a fictional account of an event in Pedro's life from the findings.

The discipline of history usually focuses on heroic deeds and people, but Martinello thinks its methods of detection should also reveal how ordinary people lived. In The Search for Pedro's Story, fragments of a real life are pieced together from things Pedro knew, including taming a mustang and playing cards. The book suggests how to ask questions, seek sources, and make sense of findings that history, especially the history of the ordinary, demands.

Author: Marian L. Martinello, Samuel P. Nesmith
Publisher: Texas Christian University Press
Published: 06/14/2006
Pages: 220
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.88lbs
Size: 9.04h x 6.00w x 0.83d
ISBN: 9780875653242

About the Author
Marian Martinello, now retired from the University of Texas at San Antonio, developed the Interdisciplinary Studies degree and teacher certification program there. She was UTSA's first Minnie Stevens Piper Professor in 1982. Her previous book, The Search for Emma's Story, was published in 1987. Martinello, the author of several education texts, lives in San Antonio.

Samuel P. Nesmith, who collaborated with Dr. Martinello, was curator at the Alamo in San Antonio and researcher and curator at the Institute of Texan Cultures. He is now director of the Texas Museum of Military History.