John Hoopes

Sonny and Valerian John Hoopes

Sonny Wells is a New York lawyer who's come west to help create government in the wilds of California, legal clerk for the military governor, General Mason. Even so, Sonny loves the excitement he finds in gold rush San Francisco, and he leaves Monterey to become a partner with the flamboyant Robert Parker, owner of the notorious Parker House. Before he makes that fatal step, however, he meets Valerian, the abandoned recluse of Mission Dolores. There he gives her a book of poems by Edgar Allan Poe, and this poetry will enchant Valerian, and Poe's living voice becomes foremost of the invisible visitors that both comfort and haunt her in her deep, dark solitude. Poe speaks to her, and she answers, and eventually wishes to be with him. He draws her to him: though he is in Baltimore: though she has not dared go outside the mission's walls in four years. Nor has she even seen the wonder of San Francisco two miles away across the sand dunes, which is arising so suddenly, so miraculously on the beach of the cove. Yet the mission is dying and she must leave it.