| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Doña Tules: Sante Fe's Courtesan and Gambler. By Mary J. Straw Cook. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007. xiv, 173 pp. $21.95, ISBN 978-0-8263-4313-0.)

Mary J. Straw Cook, an independent author, has attempted to write a biography about a gambler and courtesan, Gertrudis Barceló, or Doña Tules, who lived in the first half of the nineteenth century and died in Santa Fe in 1852. This book is the product of considerable digging by Cook into church records, land grants, court cases, and other records in Mexico and New Mexico to find every scrap of information that she could about Tules and those who knew her. Although Cook uncovered many details about the settlement and history of Santa Fe and the surrounding region, she located only one document that presumably reflects the voice of Tules herself—her 1850 will. Although smart enough to be one of the wealthiest gamblers in Santa Fe, Tules was never given an education. Unfortunately, she could not leave behind any letters or diaries that might have enabled a biographer to get a deeper sense of her personality, thoughts, or goals. This dearth of primary sources about the book's main subject might explain why it is so short—only 107 pages of text plus an extra eighteen pages containing a few primary sources that are, in some cases, only tangentially related to Tules.

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