About the Book
The first biography of the little-known real-life Tom Sawyer (a friend of Mark Twain during his brief tenure as a California newspaper reporter), told through a harrowing account of Sawyer's involvement in the hunt for a serial arsonist who terrorized mid-nineteenth century San Francisco.
When 28-year-old San Francisco "Daily Morning Call "reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer at a local bathhouse in 1863, he was seeking a subject for his first novel. As Twain steamed, played cards, and drank beer with Sawyer (a volunteer firefighter, customs inspector, and local hero responsible for having saved ninety lives at sea), he had second thoughts about "Shirley Tempest," his proposed book about a local girl firefighter, and began to envision a novel of wider scope. Twain learned that a dozen years earlier the then eighteen-year-old New York-born Sawyer had been a "Torch Boy," one of the youths who raced ahead of the volunteer firemen's hand-drawn engines at night carrying torches to light the way, always aware that a single spark could reduce the all-wood city of San Francisco to ashes in an instant. At that time a mysterious serial arsonist known by some as "The Lightkeeper" was in the process of burning San Francisco to the ground six times in eighteen months - the most disastrous and costly series of fires ever experienced by any American metropolis.
"Black Fire" is the most thorough and accurate account of Sawyer's relationship with Mark Twain and of the six devastating incendiary fires that baptized one of the modern world's favorite cities. Set amid a scorched landscape of burning roads, melting iron warehouses, exploding buildings, and deadly gangs who extorted and ruled by fear, it includes the never-before-told stories of Sawyer's heroism during the sinking of the steamship "Independence" and the crucial role Sawyer and the Torch Boys played in solving the mystery of the Lightkeeper.
Drawing on archival sources such as actual San Francisco newspaper interviews with Sawyer and the handwritten police depositions of the arrest of the Lightkeeper, bestselling author Robert Graysmith vividly portrays the gritty, corrupt, and violent world of Gold Rush-era San Francisco, overrun with gunfighters, hooligans, hordes of gold prospectors, crooked politicians, and vigilantes. By chronicling how Sawyer took it upon himself to investigate, expose, and stop the arsonist, "Black Fire" details - for the first time - Sawyer's remarkable life and illustrates why Twain would later feel compelled to name his iconic character after his San Francisco buddy when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer."
About the Author :
Robert Graysmith is the "New York Times" bestselling author of "Zodiac" and eight other books. The major motion pictures "Zodiac" and "Auto Focus" are based on his books. A "San Francisco""Chronicle" political cartoonist and artist for fifteen years, he lives in San Francisco.
Review :
"Rich....lively and chock-full of eye-opening tidbits" - "Kirkus Reviews"
"A wild and woolly tale of Gold Rush times....Graysmith conjures up a city of fire, gold, glory and ignominy, along with larger-than-life citizens, adding a valuable chapter to San Francisco's already rich history and legend....[A] darkly menacing, brightly illuminated slice of the city's fiery history." - "San Francisco Chronicle"
"Graysmith has amassed an impressive amount of historical detail....A well-researched work about community and fire." - "Cleveland Plain Dealer"
"The journalist delved deep into archival material to find the connection between Mark Twain and a heroic San Francisco firefighter named Tom Sawyer, who became the model for one of Twain's most beloved characters." - "Sacramento Bee
"
"Packing a whirlwind of events around dizzying details of boggy, impassable streets choked with decaying refuse, characters of all manner of disrepute, throughout a booming city haphazardly constructed of highly flammable material, Graysmith (who also drew the book's illustrations) inserts a teenage Tom Sawyer, newly migrated from the east, into one of the most tumultuous periods in San Francisco's storied history....While biographical details of Sawyer, his fellow firefighters, and his relationship with Twain are illuminating, it is with the historical detail in descriptions of a young, seedy, and dangerous San Francisco that the book truly shines."
- "Publishers Weekly"
"Mark Twain fanatics and firefighter-history buffs alike will flock to the tale of the real-life Tom Sawyer's adventures fighting fires in the Gold Rush-era city, depicted in remarkable detail by Graysmith...."Black Fire "captures the spirit of rugged adventure so beloved in Twain's work and so characteristic of the undaunted city built--time and time again--on the hopes of fortune-hunters." - "Booklist"
"Rich....lively and chock-full of eye-opening tidbits" - "Kirkus Reviews
"
"Graysmith has amassed an impressive amount of historical detail....A well-researched work about community and fire." - "Cleveland Plain Dealer"
"The journalist delved deep into archival material to find the connection between Mark Twain and a heroic San Francisco firefighter named Tom Sawyer, who became the model for one of Twain's most beloved characters." - "Sacramento Bee
"
"Packing a whirlwind of events around dizzying details of boggy, impassable streets choked with decaying refuse, characters of all manner of disrepute, throughout a booming city haphazardly constructed of highly flammable material, Graysmith (who also drew the book's illustrations) inserts a teenage Tom Sawyer, newly migrated from the east, into one of the most tumultuous periods in San Francisco's storied history....While biographical details of Sawyer, his fellow firefighters, and his relationship with Twain are illuminating, it is with the historical detail in descriptions of a young, seedy, and dangerous San Francisco that the book truly shines."
- "Publishers Weekly"
"Mark Twain fanatics and firefighter-history buffs alike will flock to the tale of the real-life Tom Sawyer's adventures fighting fires in the Gold Rush-era city, depicted in remarkable detail by Graysmith...."Black Fire "captures the spirit of rugged adventure so beloved in Twain's work and so characteristic of the undaunted city built--time and time again--on the hopes of fortune-hunters." - "Booklist"
"Rich....lively and chock-full of eye-opening tidbits" - "Kirkus Reviews
"
"Mark Twain fanatics and firefighter-history buffs alike will flock to the tale of the real-life Tom Sawyer's adventures fighting fires in the Gold Rush-era city, depicted in remarkable detail by Graysmith...."Black Fire "captures the spirit of rugged adventure so beloved in Twain's work and so characteristic of the undaunted city built--time and time again--on the hopes of fortune-hunters." - "Booklist"
"Rich....lively and chock-full of eye-opening tidbits" - "Kirkus Reviews"
