The Lost Woman: A Screen-Novel

About the Book

In 1876, a young woman named Kate Vernon was traveling West on a wagon train bound for California. She fell in love with a fellow traveller and soon found herself pregnant. Her lover convinced her to leave the train so they could marry at a small settlement. They rode for several days. One morning Kate woke all alone, her lover, and her horse, gone. She was abandoned in a desert wilderness, and surely would have perished if not for the native Americans that helped her build a small rock cabin, bear her child and eke out a small existence. She wrote of her experiences in a diary. In 1905, Joe Ward found her diary in the empty shack. Kate was nowhere to be found. Her son was buried nearby with a simple stone marker. The diary entries ended when she wrote of her child's death. This is where my story begins.

About the Author

Born in the shadow of the Lone Ranger Rock in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, Rick Ferreira is lucky enough to remember when parents could still take a kid to see real cowboys ride and shoot at local movie ranches. Those movie ranches may be long gone, but Rick can not shake the grip the Old West still holds on him.

While studying film making at the University of California, Los Angeles Rick unearthed a long- forgotten account of a young woman done very, very wrong. Her story became an obsession. And after years of research, during which Rick relocated lost sites, relatives, and dusty documents concerning Kate Vernon, "the lost woman of the Mojave", Rick set down the historical events in the form of the entertaining screenplay, The Lost Woman.

What does the future hold for Rick? "More writing, of course. There are so many stories to tell. And, of course, I still have to find Kate's diary. It's out there somewhere. I can just feel it."