California in the 1890s was a boom-state, a fast and loose frontier full of dreamers and grifters and get-rich-quickers, and it would have been adventure enough for most, but by the time he was twenty-one, Jack London had worn it out. He had dropped out of school at thirteen to drift around San Francisco Bay, drinking and brawling and stealing and trying-anything-once. He had worked the docks; he had been an oyster pirate (and then a paid informer on his poacher buddies); he had sailed the Bering Sea to Japan on a three-masted sealing schooner; he had train-hopped his way across America. He had good looks and charm and an ability to talk girls or policemen into seeing things his way -- although he'd spent time in the Oakland jailhouse for a few things he'd done, and time in a Buffalo prison for something he hadn't ... FULL STORY »
