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.