HANGTOWN

This concluding installment of a historical fiction trilogy focuses on a strife-plagued 19th-century mining town.

Bingham’s latest volume takes place in America in the election year 1852, with California’s Hangtown embroiled in a contentious race. On one side is the Native American Party, a xenophobic, revanchist group dedicated to making America a White, Protestant country. On the other side there’s Zach Johnson, whose passionate newspaper editorials have advocated for the rights of Native Americans, Black people, women, and immigrants. “I look to the Bible to give me guidance,” he says. “My challenge is to implement its teachings in my life….My editorials are where my strivings come to life.” But although Zach is certain of his own sanctity, it’s not a universally held opinion. Even his friends consider his editorials preachy; the town resents his socially progressive messages; and, closest to home, his own brother, Joe, an Episcopal priest, has nothing but scorn for his licentious ways, including fathering a son with a woman who’s not his wife. “Your behavior has become perverse,” Joe tells him over a friendly game of horseshoes. “You’re killing people; you get a woman pregnant and then marry someone else. I don’t understand what’s become of you. You’re not living a virtuous life.” As Bingham smoothly and confidently unfolds his narrative, Zach’s complex character is deepened and illuminated, both in his virtuous actions and in his conflicts. He hires a Native American named Elsu to be a printer for his newspaper even though the man isn’t a Christian (“I find God in the forests and streams of the Holy Mountain you call Shasta,” he tells his new employers. “God has been there for my people since the beginning”). And Zach runs afoul of the book’s standout villain, Ben Wright (“The man lives to kill Indians”). While the author’s pacing is uneven and his dialogue is almost always fairly wooden, his narrative energy will keep readers’ interest in Hangtown alive.

An often stiff but intriguing tale about a crusading newspaper editor and his enemies.