A life of Bret Harte, "giving him credit for originating 'westerns' in 'The Luck of Roaring Camp' and his other tales of the Sierra foothills mining camps. O'Connor sheds ... light on Harte's unhappy henpecked marital life, his extramarital liaisons, his quarrel with Mark Twain, and the downhill slide of his writing career after his first success in San Francisco."