John Isaac Jones's new biographical novel on Samuel Langhorne Clemens, A/K/A Mark Twain, brings the fascinating life of America's most famous humorist to you in vivid, captivating detail.
His time - 1840s-1910 America. Wagon trains moving west; California gold rush; telegraph invented; War between the States; Lincoln assassinated; the golden spike; Custer massacred; the trail of tears; invention of electric light, the telephone and the automobile; the Spanish-American War; political events leading to WWI.
His loves - His strait-laced, highly-religious mother Jane who vowed he was "born to be hanged!"; Laura Hawkins, his childhood sweetheart to whom he was unable to commit; Ina Coolbrith, the beautiful California poetess and lover who vowed to hold him; his beloved wife Olivia who urged him to become "a serious writer;" his oldest daughter Susy whom he worshipped from the day she was born until the day of her death.
His genius - Samuel Langhorne Clemens, news reporter, steamboat pilot, gold miner, lecturer, speculator, publisher, world-traveler, adventurer, author of the classic Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn books; singlehandedly invented the travelogue genre; his later books, including A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Roughing it, Life on the Mississippi and the short story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, earned him the title "The Father of American Literature."
This is the second volume in the Great American Authors Series. The first was A Quiet Madness: A Biographical Novel of Edgar Allan Poe.