The true story of a woman who murdered her married lover in Gilded Age San Francisco, and the trial that turned this raucous frontier town into a modern metropolis.
In addition to court transcripts and newspaper accounts, Mr. Krist has mined a rich vein of material in the Crittenden family papers at the University of Michigan ... Also folds in portraits of vibrant and less-famous characters roaming San Francisco during the city’s explosive periods of growth, bust and reinvention.
Dramatic ... Except for brief vignettes from the trial, Krist’s narrative does not return to the scene of the crime for more than 200 pages. This structure demands a fair amount of investment in people whose motives and morals are muddled, at best ... The author’s evenhandedness and scrupulous adherence to the documentary record are worthy qualities in a writer of nonfiction, but they need a little passionate partisanship to fight against the inertia of 'it depends.' We’re left wondering: What did this case mean for the city of San Francisco? And what might it mean for those reading about it today?
