Trespassers at the Golden Gate

The sensational,forgotten true story of a woman who murdered her married lover in Gilded Age San Francisco and the trial that epitomized the city’s transformation from raucous frontier town into modern metropolisΓÇöfrom the New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Sin Shortly before dusk on November 31870just as the ferryboat El Capitan was pulling away from its slip into San Francisco Baya woman clad in black emerged from the shadows and strode across the crowded deck. Reaching under her veilshe drew a small pistol and aimed it directly at a well-dressed man sitting quietly with his wife and children. The woman fired a single bullet into his chest. ΓÇ£I did it and I donΓÇÖt deny itΓÇ¥ she said when arrested shortly thereafter. ΓÇ£He ruined both myself and my daughter.ΓÇ¥ Though little remembered todaythe trial of Laura D. Fair for the murder of her loverA. P. Crittendenmade headlines nationwide. As bestselling author Gary Krist revealsthe operatic facts of the caseΓÇöa woman strung along for years by a two-timing mankilling him in an alleged fit of madnessΓÇöchallenged an American populace still searching for moral consensus after the Civil War. The trial shone an early and uncomfortable spotlight on social issues like the role of womenthe sanctity of the familyand the range of acceptable expressions of genderwhile jolting the still-adolescent metropolis of 1870s San Franciscoa city eager to shed its rough-and-tumble Gold Rush-era reputation. Trespassers at the Golden Gate brings readers inside the untamed frontier towna place whereΓÇöfor a brief periodΓÇöotherwise marginalized communities found unique opportunities. Readers meet a secretly wealthy Black housekeeperan enterprising Chinese brothel madamand a French rabble-rouser who refused to dress in sufficiently ΓÇ£feminineΓÇ¥ clothingΓÇöas well as familiar figures like Mark Twain and Susan B. Anthonywho become swept up in the drama of the Laura Fair affair. Kristwho previously brought New Orleans to vivid life in Empire of Sin and Chicago in City of Scoundrelsrecounts this astonishing story and its surprisingly modern echoes in a rollicking narrative that probes what it all meantΓÇöboth for a nation still scarred by war and for a city eager for the world stage.