This is a thin book that purports to describe how four writers -- two of whom you have probably never heard of -- "reinvented American literature" in the 1860s. Actually, it's a love letter to the author's admirable home town, San Francisco. Charles Warren Stoddard and Ina Coolbrith are the 19th...
Past the mountains the prospect opened up to reveal the town in the distance, a modest cluster of houses in the shadow of the Alleghenies, on the banks of a river that ran eastward through the bluffs. If the impression from afar was pleasantly rustic, the mood in Bedford was anything but tranquil...