Classic, beautifully written account of Robert Louis Stevenson’s sojourn in Calistoga, California, wonderfully evoking the late-nineteenth-century wine country.

In July of 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson received word that his future wife's (Frances Osbourne’s) divorce was almost complete but she was seriously ill. Dropping everything he left Scotland and traveled to Monterey in California becoming very ill along the way.

Penniless, in broken health, and his writing career in tatters he was nursed back to health by his doctor, his nurse, and his future wife. His father then provided him money to help and he married. Still too weak to undertake the journey back to Scotland, he spent an unconventional honeymoon in a shanty in a derelict mining camp.

This is his story of their time in the shanty. Other tales of his quest appear in "Essays of Travel" and "Across the Plains." Stevenson describes traveling by ferries, trains, and carts to Calistoga, where he meets a curious collection of characters who had remained in the region after the shutdown of the unprofitable mine. He describes an area full of eagles, grizzly bears, and rattlesnakes — different from the landscape today.

Stevenson’s account is a delightful travel story that provides a rare and vivid look at the flora and fauna, and above all the people, of an extraordinary period in the American West.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850-1894) was born in Scotland. He began his literary career as a travel writer with An Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévannes (1879). He went on to write such classics as Kidnapped, A Child's Garden of Verses, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.