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Start giftingOpenings in the Old Trail
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Learn moreAlthough American author Bret Harte is most readily associated with stories about the West, it is his skill with characterization that distinguishes him from the hundreds of others who set fictional tales in the region. The miners, soldiers, gamblers, entrepreneurs, and lost souls who populate these pages are limned with Harte’s unique combination of dry wit and tender pathos.
This charming collection of Harte’s short stories focuses on life in old California and includes “Openings in the Old Trail,” “Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff,” “The Landlord of the Big Flume Hotel,” “A Buckeye Hollow Inheritance,” “The Reincarnation of Smith,” “Lanty Foster’s Mistake,” “An Ali Baba of the Sierras,” “Miss Peggy’s Proteges,” and “The Goddess of Excelsior.”
Francis Bret Harte (1836–1902) was an American short-story writer, poet, and humorist. Best remembered for his stories fiction stories concerning the California Gold Rush, featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures. He helped create the American local-colour writing style, which attempted to better represent the particularities of a place and its inhabitants through elements such as dialect, landscape, and folklore. In a career spanning more than four decades, he wrote poetry, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches in addition to fiction.
Patrick Cullen (a.k.a. John Lescault), a native of Massachusetts, is a graduate of the Catholic University of America. He lives in Washington, DC, where he works in theater.