Pedro Menendez: From Avilés to Saint Augustine

By Jose luis Fuertes

In the autumn of 1565, a hard man from the Cantabrian coast knelt on a beach at the edge of the known world, kissed a wooden cross, and founded a city on the sand. He named it Saint Augustine. It would become the oldest continuously inhabited European-founded city in what is now the United States.

This is the story of the man who planted it there: Pedro Men ndez de Avil s, Governor of Florida. Mariner, conqueror, and instrument of an empire. A captain whom the Ocean both made and unmade, who lost a son in its waters and his own freedom at the hands of his enemies' ink. A man of unwavering and terrible faith, capable in a single campaign of the most beautiful and the most atrocious acts.

Narrated in the first person by his chaplain, the chronicler Francisco L pez de Mendoza Grajales, this novel neither absolves nor condemns him, but tells his story in its entirety: the glory and the prison, the sand and the blood, the dream that burned and the empire that outlived him.

A historical novel about the conquest of Florida, about faith and ashes, and about the city that started it all.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H8WWRXKV
• ISBN13: 9798185202074
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.0"