What motivated you to write Inside the Barbary Coast?
From 1984 until 1990, we were living in the Bay Area and I was working at Ampex Corporation in Redwood City. Ampex was a major supplier to the television industry and supported TheatreWorks in Palo Alto. From watching Robert Kelley’s superbly directed plays, and by getting involved with the San Mateo Historical Society and the College of Notre Dame, I gained an affinity for both the dramatic arts and history. I was especially intrigued by the life and times of Billy Ralston, San Francisco’s great builder during the 1860s, whose Belmont residence is the most notable building on the College of Notre Dame campus. I wrote a musical play about Ralston called “Life at the Palace.” Ralston built the Palace Hotel (today the Sheraton Palace on Montgomery Street in San Francisco) as a monument to his sweetheart, Louisa Thorne, one of the Vanderbilts. Unfortunately, the play was never produced, and I took a job in 1990 with Boeing in Seattle. With all the history books I had acquired to write “Life at the Palace,” I decided to turn my attention to writing a historical novel instead.

Why didn’t you write a biography about Billy Ralston?
The material is certainly fascinating enough, but there are already four biographies about Ralston. They’re a little hard to find, but they’re there.

How long did it take you to write Inside the Barbary Coast?
Just about 10 years, including the research. I already had many of the books I needed, but not all. Many of them I photocopied, especially the rare ones. I did most of my research at the Stanford Green Library, the Bancroft Library at the University of California (Berkeley), the Toland Medical Library at the University of San Francisco, and the University of Washington Medical Library. Because I was also working full time at Boeing, I borrowed James Michener’s idea of getting up early in the morning (I’m talkin’ 4 a.m.) and working on the book two hours before helping my wife with the kids before school, then going to work. I actually finished the book in Hong Kong, where I worked from 1995 to 2000.

Is the book historically accurate?
It’s as accurate as today’s available sources of information allow it to be. Also, most of the secondary characters in the book are real, and the primary characters are based on composites of actual people. All of the location settings and basic chronology, with minor exceptions for fictional purposes, are accurate. A comprehensive timeline of San Francisco history from 1776 until 1917 is included in the text and at insidebooks.net.

So it’s really a book about San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, from 1890 to 1906, as told through the eyes of a young doctor?
That’s right. I was fascinated at how primitive medicine was in the 19th century. But, just as it was gaining in sophistication, so were the techniques of the patent-medicine salesmen like Pierre Louthan. The quack doctors and the regular doctors were at odds against each other - medically, morally, and from the standpoint of competing for the consumers’ dollar. Then I was surprised to see how electrotherapeutics entered the picture in the 1890s, adding further confusion. All of this is set against the backdrop of San Francisco’s Chinatown, with its tong wars and opium dens; the advent of X-rays; the death of Hawaii’s King David Kalakaua at the Palace Hotel; troops amassing in Golden Gate Park en route to fight in the Philippines; and the continuing struggle, leading up to the passing of the Federal Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, between regular and quack medicine.

What was your most interesting historical 'discovery' in researching this book?
There were many discoveries, as any enthusiast of Califonria history or early medicine will find out, hopefully, when they read the book. But I think the most shocking discovery, historically speaking, was the murder-suicide in 1898 of Jim Corbett's parents, which ended up being a powerful scene in the book.

Who produced the art for your book cover?
It was produced by our 18-year-old son Patrick who attends the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida.

He is available for freelance assignments?
Yes. You can contact him via his website, www.metavisuals.com

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David Jensen