The Silverado squatters

Just as Peter Mayle captured the mood an characters of Provence, Robert Louis Stevenson evokes California's wine country and some of the unique characters he found there while honeymooning with Bay Area native Frances Osbourne and her stepson in the summer of 1880. The new family spent nine weeks in Calistoga and the Napa Valley, residing in a bunkhouse of an abandoned silver mine, doing what visitors to the area do today - living graciously (given the at times daunting constraints of their rustic adopted home), admiring the region's serene beauty, and sipping samples of the local elixirs. The author's first work published on this side of the Atlantic (with the exception of a few poems in The Atlantic Monthly), The Silverado Squatters laid the groundwork for the immense popularity Stevenson came to enjoy here. This classic, beautifully written account of a sojourn in the late-nineteenth century wine country by one of Northern California's literary forefathers provides a vivid, delightful complement to an actual visit to the region today.