California Street - Hardcover

Anchylus Saye came to San Francisco in a hand-me-down suit, hungry for success. Ruthless and tempestuous in everything he did, Saxe found a bride, seized a newspaper, and used it to take wealth, power and position. His strong opinions came out daily in every edition; his house on California Street was a place of wonders, with a glass roof that glowed like ripe fruit, and an organ to pipe music into every room, and bright metal birds that sang at the touch of a gold button, all these things he had, but one thing eluded him. Saxe married a lady, but socially he never quite made it. He was too much like the ancestors whose existence San Francisco was trying to forget, the horny-handed, hard-drinking brutes who fleeced the Forty-niners of their savings, married the madams and founded the aristocracy which afterward forgot them. He came to San Francisco two generations too late, did Saxe. His daughters had the best education money could buy and everything that went with it, but Saxe remained as outspoken and tough as ever he was, breaking conventions right and left and shocking Society with all too obvious pleasure. His daughters were his pride and his treasure. The eldest became an international socialite, wildly beautiful and beautifully wild. Another married a distinguished newspaperman, a rival of Saxe's. Over the scarcely cold body of their mother, they both turned on their father to tear away his power. By his side, then, stood his third daughter-an illegitimate girl whose mother had been a streetwalker. Saxe fought his last battle against a powerful combination of enemies-the Eastern banks and newspapers, his per-sonal enemies in San Francisco-and two of his daughters. Niven Busch's lusty story of the Saxe family is a micro-sharp look at a newhorizon U. S. A. It could not have happened anywhere but in that wonderful, sophisticated city, sparkling' on its eleven hills.