Two men hold up a Wells Fargo train car and make off with twelve thousand dollars cash. What ensues is the initial ecstacy of riches and the compounding trouble wealth brings. Set to climax in the rubble of the 1905 San Francisco earthquake, Treasure and Trouble Therewith (1917) provides a definitive portrait of early 20th-century California and those who lived there. Using the booming West, Geraldine Bonner dissects American greed consuming the hopeful pilgrims trying to make a place for themselves in the Golden State.

This new edition of Bonner’s novel was edited with an introduction and timeline by Dan Coyne.