TY - BOOK AU - Bonner,Geraldine TI - Hard-Pan: A Story of Bonanza Fortunes AV - PS PY - 2020/// CY - Salt Lake City, UT PB - Project Gutenberg KW - Gold miners -- Fiction KW - San Francisco (Calif.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction N1 - Release date is 2020-11-28; D A Alexander and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.); Original publication data not identified N2 - "Hard-Pan: A Story of Bonanza Fortunes" by Geraldine Bonner is a novel written in the late 19th century. The story unfolds in a declining San Francisco, teeming with remnants of past fortunes, focusing on the lives of characters tied to the city’s dramatic fluctuations in wealth. Central to the narrative are John Gault, a man caught between his intriguing encounters with Viola Reed, the daughter of a fallen bonanza king, and Letitia Mason, who harbors feelings for him. The opening of the novel sets the stage with a dinner party where characters discuss Colonel Ramsay Reed and his daughter, revealing the complexities and expectations of high society. As the conversations unfold, John Gault's growing interest in Viola becomes evident, contrasting with Letitia's contrasting feelings towards John. After dinner, John visits Viola at her home, a stark juxtaposition to the earlier lavish gathering, where the authenticity of their interactions begins to spark deeper emotions. This initial segment establishes the central themes of social status, unrequited love, and the haunting specter of past opulence that pervades their lives, propelling the reader into the intricacies of each character's motivations and societal roles. (This is an automatically generated summary.) UR - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63911 ER -