Cannibal Eliot and the Lost Histories of San Franc

Those who fancy historical fiction with an emphasis on the historical will relish Obenzinger's ( New York on Fire ) collection of seven fictional first-person accounts depicting San Francisco life from its early European settlement in 1776 to the major earthquake of 1906. In the late 1700s, Father Martin de Landaeta, a missionary who is zealous to the point of cruelty, describes the ``paternal ministrations'' he uses to teach Indians about Spanish power in this life and about eternal reward in the next. In the mid-19th century, William ``Cannibal'' Eliot portrays San Francisco as a rough-and-ready boomtown where there are fewer opportunities for its flood of ``Argonauts'' (immigrants from all over the globe) than for men like Samuel Brannan, a corrupt Mormon and civic leader, a ``criminal who will rid the city of its criminals.'' A later ``document'' tells of a woman who goes on trial for murdering her married lover. The city is titillated by the scandal, and Hattie Fisk, a newspaper typesetter, records the proceedings while providing a glimpse of her own situation and of her hopes as a working woman and suffragist who must make her way in a man's world. (Sept.)