Trespassers at the Golden Gate
A True Account of Love, Murder, and Madness in Gilded-Age San Francisco
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The sensational, forgotten true story of a woman who murdered her married lover in Gilded Age San Francisco and the trial that epitomized the city's transformation from raucous frontier town into modern metropolis—from the New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Sin
Shortly before dusk on November 3, 1870, just as the ferryboat El Capitan was pulling away from its slip into San Francisco Bay, a woman clad in black emerged from the shadows and strode across the crowded deck. Reaching under her veil, she drew a small pistol and aimed it directly at a well-dressed man sitting quietly with his wife and children. The woman fired a single bullet into his chest. “I did it and I don’t deny it,” she said when arrested shortly thereafter. “He ruined both myself and my daughter.”
Though little remembered today, the trial of Laura D. Fair for the murder of her lover, A. P. Crittenden, made headlines nationwide. As bestselling author Gary Krist reveals, the operatic facts of the case—a woman strung along for years by a two-timing man, killing him in an alleged fit of madness—challenged an American populace still searching for moral consensus after the Civil War. The trial shone an early and uncomfortable spotlight on social issues like the role of women, the sanctity of the family, and the range of acceptable expressions of gender, while jolting the still-adolescent metropolis of 1870s San Francisco, a city eager to shed its rough-and-tumble Gold Rush-era reputation.
Trespassers at the Golden Gate brings readers inside the untamed frontier town, a place where—for a brief period—otherwise marginalized communities found unique opportunities. Readers meet a secretly wealthy Black housekeeper, an enterprising Chinese brothel madam, and a French rabble-rouser who refused to dress in sufficiently “feminine” clothing—as well as familiar figures like Mark Twain and Susan B. Anthony, who become swept up in the drama of the Laura Fair affair.
Krist, who previously brought New Orleans to vivid life in Empire of Sin and Chicago in City of Scoundrels, recounts this astonishing story and its surprisingly modern echoes in a rollicking narrative that probes what it all meant—both for a nation still scarred by war and for a city eager for the world stage.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A brazen murder changes the course of a struggling city in this revealing history. Leaving his wife and children back east, young lawyer A. P. Crittenden made the perilous journey to Gold Rush–era San Francisco hoping to make his fortune. There, he got involved in politics and speculation, eventually meeting young boardinghouse owner Laura Fair, with whom he began a scandalous affair. Laura, hoping to secure a respectable place in society, believed his promises to leave his wife, but when his lies proved to be too much, she was left with one option: kill the man she loved. Using century-old transcripts, historical records, and correspondence, consummate storyteller Gary Krist (whose New Orleans history, Empire of Sin, we loved) has crafted a fascinating, immediate account of the affair and trial that riveted San Francisco and the entire country. Trespassers at the Golden Gate is a sordid tale of betrayal and murder that rivals Erik Larson’s best small-scale histories.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this masterful work of true crime, Krist (The Mirage Factory) wraps a detailed portrait of a booming late-19th-century San Francisco around an engrossing account of a scandalous murder. In 1870, a woman named Laura Fair shot her lover, prominent attorney A.P. Crittenden, aboard a ferry from Oakland to San Francisco. Krist begins the narrative with a retelling of the murder from Fair's perspective. Crittenden was on the boat with his wife, Clara, whom he'd been promising to divorce for seven years; fed up with his lies, Fair shot him through the heart. The narrative then rewinds to recount the lives of Fair and Crittenden before the killing and to illustrate the social climate of San Francisco, which had recently grown from a "raucous and untamed frontier town" into the nation's 14th-largest city. With residents and city leaders aspiring to more growth and greater sophistication, Fair's actions came under intense scrutiny, prompting the prosecution to call for the death penalty. Krist recreates Fair's two trials—she was eventually acquitted on grounds of temporary insanity—with meticulous research and a novelist's flair for drama. This top-shelf blend of history and entertainment is as edifying as it is exciting.
