Some of my novels have followed historical events quite closely, and others are almost entirely fiction. For example, Lead Me Home follows the route of an actual wagon train quite closely, Now I’m Found features a section on the California Constitutional Convention, and Safe Thus Far follows an actual Oregon […]
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Gambling with Gold: Vice in San Francisco in 1849
As I continue to research and edit my work-in-progress about the early years of the California Gold Rush, I recently found some interesting first-person accounts in A Year of Mud and Gold: San Francisco in Letters and Diaries, 1849-1850, edited by William Benemann (1999). Some of the more fascinating information […]
Continue readingHow the Great Fires Shaped Early San Francisco
The last survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake died earlier this month. William Del Monte was three months old when the earthquake struck and 109 when he died on January 11. Reading the news articles about his life and death brought to mind all the novels I’ve read about […]
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