Robbing the Pillars - The Empire Barons, #1

Gold Rush California's notorious Legislature of a Thousand Drinks launches a secret consortium of frontier barons, triggering the collapse of independent mines throughout Sierra Nevada. James MacLaren, a fugitive from Scotland, embarks on a new life in the California Gold Rush. He is a man always on his guard, leery of the entitled but wary of his own temper. While raising a headstrong daughter and denying his love for a woman he cannot have, he champions miners in their fight against the Coleridge Sierra speculators seeking to create a mining industry monopoly.
San Francisco's Judge Dandridge sees himself as a man of vision. But when justice fails in his courtroom, retribution can be extracted by other means. His venal and mercenary machinations tie him to the powerful Sam Brannan, the Chinese Tong, and even the governorship of California. Robbing the Pillars is a story of the working class fighting for legitimacy against the power of gold and those it seduces -- a tale of hidden pasts, love and betrayal, and the fulfillment of dreams against incredible odds.
Robbing the Pillars is the first book in the Empire Baron series."This is a powerful, American melodrama with strong, fearless characters willing to endure anything to realize their dream of striking it rich in California's Gold Rush country in the 1860's. In Robbing the Pillars, author Kalen Vaughan Johnson introduces readers to a gritty but admirable fugitive who has escaped Scotland to start life anew in the Sierra foothills.
On the other side of that lofty goal are political figures in San Francisco seeking to rid the land of independent miners and seize their riches .