"I have used a technique which is valid in fiction but controversial in a volume of history" (page xvi), confesses David Allan Comstock, author of Gold Diggers and Camp Followers (Grass Valley: Comstock Bonanza Books, 1982, xvi, 413 pages). The first three chapters introduce the book's three principal characters -- Wema (died c1881), "chief of the local nisenan tribe" (page xv) -- Tallman Rolfe (1824-1872), an apostate Mormon printer and newspaper publisher -- and the attorney Niles Searls (1825-1907), the namesake of Searls Historical Library. And characters they are, in what is essentially an historical novel set from 1845 to 1851.
    History is the art of connecting factual dots with speculative fiction in the name of interpretation. Comstock's dots are passages culled from personal letters, diaries, newspaper articles, and other such historical sources. He highlights them in bold face, without attributions, and connects them with imagined narrative and dialog.
    Where Comstock connects his dots with lines depicting a wall, tree trunk, or fan, other historians might portray a snake, spear, or rope. Perhaps all are parts of the same elephant. And maybe fiction is not always a stranger to truth.
    This is the first volume of Comstock's "The Nevada County Chronicles" trilogy. The sequels -- Brides of the Gold Rush (1987) and Greenbacks and Copperheads (1995) -- have increasing dot-to-line (fact/fiction) ratios and forego dialog.

Catalog #: 979.42 COM
Author: David Allan Comstock
Publisher: Grass Valley (CA): Comstock Bonanza Press
Published: 1982
Subjects: Nevada County, Nevada City, Grass Valley, Wema, Niles Searls, Tallman Rolfe, Mid-19th Century, 1848-1851, Historical Fiction, Weimar, Weymah
Original Held At: