After the Gold Rush
is the epic story of the building of San Francisco as novelized history, told by the real people who built it, in their own words, from original source material such as newspapers, letters, court documents and the novels they wrote themselves.
After the Gold Rush brings to life California’s rarely discussed Civil War and Reconstruction years. The characters are familiar American icons like Mark Twain, Governor Leland Stanford and mining baron George Hearst—and many more real historical figures who deserve to be equally well known, for better or worse:
- Mary Ellen Pleasant, Black entrepreneur, conductor on the California end of the Underground Railroad, civil rights activist, key supporter of San Francisco’s Executive Committee of Black journalists and businessmen—and voodoo queen.
- Phoebe Apperson Hearst, teenage bride, mother and mentor to William Randolph Hearst—who educated herself to become a significant builder of the University of California, and one of the state’s most important philanthropists.
- Theodore and Anna Judah, the couple who conceived of and pushed through the country’s first transcontinental railroad.
- Ina Coolbrith, the beauty who escaped an abusive marriage to compete head-to-head with the state’s leading literary men and become the first poet laureate of California.
- Her best friend Charles Warren Stoddard, who wrote the first acknowledged gay novel in a time that had not yet heard the word homosexual.
- Southern transplants Asbury Harpending and Senator William Gwin, who fought to turn California into a slave state—and nearly succeeded. Abolitionist Jessie Frémont, celebrity wife of legendary Pathfinder John C. Frémont, who mustered literary and clerical forces to stop them.
- Author Ambrose Bierce, who fought with honors in the great battles of the Civil War until he took a Confederate sniper’s bullet in the head —then captured his horrific wartime experiences on the page.
- Moy Jin Mun and Dr. Yee Fung Cheung, the Chinese servant and doctor who were intimately involved with the powerful Stanford family and the building of the railroad.
- Michael, Charles, and Gus de Young—the troubled children of a prostitute, who built a newspaper empire while still in their teens.
- Joshua Norton, the gentle lunatic who declared himself Emperor of the United States (and Protector of Mexico) and was not only indulged by the press but allowed to rule the city from its streets.
California’s pioneers, dreamers, barons, immigrants, californios, civil rights leaders, villains. They knew each other, married each other, fought each other, and killed each other in “the most picturesque city, in the most romantic state, at the most dramatic moment in the history of the Republic.”
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After the Gold Rush is currently available only online. Subscribe to get full access to all current chapters, photo and source material links, and the website. Paid subscribers will be notified every other week with a section of chapter links going directly to your inbox.
Alexandra Sokoloff is the million-selling, Thriller award-winning author/screenwriter of fourteen crime and supernatural thrillers. The NY Times calls her books "Some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre." Her Thriller Award-nominated Huntress Moon series follows a haunted FBI agent on the hunt for a female serial killer, turning hated tropes of violence against women inside out.
Alex is also the author/teacher of the internationally acclaimed Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbooks, workshops, and Substack newsletter.
She is a California native who grew up in both Northern and Southern California, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from U.C. Berkeley, where she majored in theater and history. After the Gold Rush is inspired by her love of California, the TV series Deadwood, and the present urgency of telling, grieving, and celebrating our history in all its brilliance, darkness, complexity, and diversity.
She lives in Los Angeles and in Scotland.
