Back in 1975, at the University of Southern California film school, I took my first screenwriting class. Our big assignment that semester was to write a treatment for a feature-length film.
Though I had little writing experience, I had already rejected the advice that you should write what you know. I believed then, as I do now, that you should write what you want to know, or where you want to go, or who you want to meet when you get there. And operating on the principle that I should go big or go back to Boston, I decided to follow my ambition. I would write something historical and as big as I could make it.
But whenever we write, we are writing what we know, because to create believable characters, we draw on our understanding of human nature, which emerges from experience and observation. I remember looking around at my USC friends and thinking that all of us had come to California to chase the Hollywood dream, but now we were learning to face the hard realities of making our way. Some of us would succeed. Some of us would be disappointed. And in that, we were a lot like the men and women who had been coming to California since 1849. We were living our own Gold Rush.
Out of that sense of connection with the past grew the adventures of two characters named Spencer and Flynn in a screenplay called The Mother Lode, and out of that screenplay has grown this novel, four decades later.
Though the screenplay was not produced (the fate of most screenplays), it won the 1976 Hal Wallis Screenwriting Fellowship, which meant that my name appeared on the cover of Variety, I signed with an agent, and for the first time in my life, people other than my wife called me a writer. So, while I should thank the legendary producer of such classics as Casablanca and True Grit for offering that fellowship, I must first thank my wife. She called me a writer long before there was any supporting evidence.
Chris was there in 1975 and she’s still there today, my best friend then and now, ready to put up with long weekends of work, ready to share a nice dinner and a good bottle of wine when the work day is over for both of us, and always ready for research trips, which can be a lot of fun if you do them right.
Like Peter Fallon, I believe that by visiting the places where history happened, I can feel the vibrations and maybe make sense of it for all. I also like to write books about places where our children live. When I wrote The Lincoln Letter, set in Civil War Washington, our daughter was living there. Now, both sons live in California, so we got to see a lot of them during the writing. Indeed, all of the Martin-related young people—Bill and Virginia, Dan and Keri, Liz and Will—have offered support, insight, expertise, commentary, companionship, and enthusiasm, especially in our explorations of California vineyards, San Francisco restaurants, Gold Rush historical sites, and the High Sierras.
And our first research trip was our most fortuitous. It brought us to Sutter’s Mill, where gold was discovered in a tailrace on a January morning in 1848, and where we met Ed Allen, one of the most knowledgeable site historians I have ever encountered.
Soon, Ed and his wife, Joanne, were welcoming us into their home, offering us their gracious hospitality, and devoting days—yes, days—to showing us the gold country that they know and love so well. We visited placer sites, hydraulic sites, mine shafts, head frames, dry gulches, tailing piles, and the stone foundations of mining towns long since dried up and blown away. We felt the heat. We heard the silence. We saw the ghosts. And I took a lot of notes. In the towns that survived and thrived, we also enjoyed some nice meals. If you feel the landscape in this book, if you see that world of a hundred and seventy years ago, it is in large part thanks to Ed and Joanne Allen.
Since Amador County winemaking also figures in this tale, we just had to do our share of tasting, and wineries like Renwood, Terra d’Oro, and Deaver provided wonderful experiences. But I must mention William Easton, owner of Easton/Terre Rouge wineries, who took the time to give us a fascinating tour of his vineyard and discuss the work of growing Zinfandel in Gold Country.
There are many others to thank, too.
First, a few institutions, organizations, and sites: the California Digital Newspaper Collection, a project of U.C. Riverside, which has digitized a window onto the daily life of that distant era; the California Historical Society, where the librarians brought me document that amazed me; the Carson Pass Ranger Station at the El Dorado National Forest, which offers on-site lectures on the struggles of the overland immigrants; the Columbia State Historic Park; the Doheny Library at the University of Southern California, where I read so many Gold Rush journals so long ago; the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, site of Sutter’s Mill; the Old Sacramento Historic District and the Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park in Sacramento; and the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.
Among fellow authors: Deborah Coonts checked out San Francisco locations for me when I couldn’t get there myself. David Morrell, cofounder of the International Thriller Writers and the man who gave the world the character called Rambo, saw that important research material landed on my desk. Willie Nikkel took me gold panning on the American River, just a mile or so downstream from Sutter’s Mill. I still have the gold flakes in a little bottle.
Others from across the country: Joseph Amster, who gives great tours of San Francisco in the character of the Emperor Norton; Christopher Brewster of Washington provided insights into foreign investment in the United States. Margherita Desy of the Naval History and Heritage Command and Gary Foreman of the U.S.S. Constitution Museum offered details on the handling of a nineteenth-century sailing vessel. Over lunch in the famed Tadich Grill, Mike Green of San Francisco discussed international gold funds. And Steve and Mary Swig of San Francisco welcomed us into their handsome Victorian home, a pre-earthquake classic, showed us their grand city, and provided copious primary source materials.
A few old friends: Rick Jewell, a retired USC cinema professor, read the screenplay four decades ago and never stopped telling me that I should turn it into a novel. John Hamilton and Joe Riley, whom I met in high school long ago, are still dispensing wit, wisdom, and humor. Tom Cook does the same thing, with the added insights and commiserations of another lifelong novelist.
In publishing: Robert Gottlieb has been my agent of thirty-four years (and there aren’t many writers who can say that). Tom Doherty and Bob Gleason, my publisher and editor at Tor/Forge, and their team of talented professionals keep me in print in the digital age. It was Bob Gleason who said a few years back, “You know, Bill, there’s a great story in the California Gold Rush.” I said, “I’ve been thinking the same thing for a long, long time.”
And finally, a word about the two men to whom this book is dedicated:
Kevin Starr was perhaps California’s most famous historian. At Harvard, back in 1970, he taught a course that opened my eyes to the connections between American history and literature, and he later became my thesis advisor. We renewed our friendship when I started this novel, which led to long lunches and pleasant dinners with our wives, visits to the Bohemian and the Pacific Union and the other clubs where Kevin was a member, and a powerful sense that when I sat with him, I was sitting at the fountainhead of San Francisco history. He was a beloved teacher, a prolific writer and scholar, and the grand possibilities of California and of the America dream were always evident in his writing and his outlook.
Steve Martell was my first friend in high school, which made him my oldest friend. He was godfather to one of my sons, as I was to his. He was a sounding board for my story ideas and a cheerleader for my books, and no matter how long you have been at this work, you need cheerleaders. Steve and I talked often about this Gold Rush adventure. More than once he said, “Bill, if we were alive back then, we would have gotten on a ship and sailed to California, right along with your characters.”
Both of them were in line to receive the first draft of this book. I wanted their opinions before I rewrote. But on one sad Sunday in January of 2017, I learned that both had passed away, one in Boston, one in San Francisco. I think of them often and miss them both. But, as I hope this book demonstrates, while life may be fleeting and fragile, friendship is not.
October 2017