Treasure and Trouble Therewith

Geraldine Bonner’s Treasure and Trouble Therewith, A Tale of California, richly evokes a moment in the history of San Francisco. The adventure book is a joy to read, not just for the history and interplay of scoundrel and hero, wicked woman and good, but also for the small treasures buried in the midst of great adventure—word photographs or paintings that bring to life the City of San Francisco and the surrounding countryside of the 1900s. On almost every page, Bonner paints a vivid picture for the reader, whether in miniature or in grand strokes, of a landscape, a portrait of a person caught in a thoughtful pose, or an exquisite moment enjoyed in nature. From the first, the reader encounters such moments as this:

Sliding silent over the silent stream, they were like a picture done in a few strong colors, violent green of the rushes, violent blue of the sky. Their reflection moved with them, two boats joining at the water line, in each boat two figures, every fold of their garments, every shade and high light, minutely and dazzlingly reproduced.

The following could be a description of a Romantic period painting (J.M.W. Turner perhaps):

. . . the sky to the zenith was a glistening orange, blurred with shadowy up-rollings of smoke, along the city's crest the torn flame ribbons playing like northern lights. Figures that faced it were glazed by its glare as if a red-dipped paint brush had been slapped across them; those seen against it were black silhouettes moving on fiery distances and gleaming walls.

Characters are prone to remembering moments from their lives as photographs:

Irrelevant pictures, disconnected, having no point, chased across his brain—the saloon in Fresno where he had cleaned the brasses, and, jostling it, Chrystie's face, just before she had wept, puckered like a baby's. He saw the tules in the low sun, the green ranks, the gold-glazed streams, Mark Burrage coming down the long drawing-room eyeing him from under thick brows, Lorry's hand with its sparkle of rings holding out the letter.