Across the Great Divide

In 1849, two very different men journeyed to the California Gold Rush. Captain George Washington Kidd (no relation to the famous pirate) traveled by wagon train over the hazardous emigrant trails of the Great Plains. Samuel Woodberry Grush (no relation to the author) sailed with a company of like-minded men on a three-masted barque braving the dangers of an angry sea and a brutal Cape Horn. Their paths converged in the pioneering town of Nevada City, California where their story mirrored the history of an era of gold fever, struggle, boom and bust. It is a story filled with characters of the old West: grizzled mountain men, legendary bandits, beautiful divas, mysterious madams, maltreated foreign immigrants, and persecuted Indigenous Peoples. It is 98 percent true.