Author Nicholas Clapp and photographer Will Furman portray Bodie in both vivid words and stunning photography—a town that had two sides, aptly described in an 1870s account…On the eve of her family’s departure for booming Bodie, a little girl was said to have gathered her dolls, that they might join her as she knelt by her bed, her prayer concluding with a somber…“Goodbye, God; we are going to Bodie!” Word was that the camp was hard-bitten, desperado-ridden.Getting wind of the girl’s farewell to the Almighty, The Weekly Bodie Standard reported that, oh no, that wasn’t what the she had mind. Not at all. Someone had gotten the punctuation wrong. What she surely said was…“Good, by God, we are going to Bodie!” There were, in fact, two Bodies. On one hand, it was “a fearfully and wonderfully bad place” stalked by shootist in black swallow-tailed coats. On the other hand, it was a town of hard-working pioneers who dressed their little girls in starched white frocks and met adversity with charity and good cheer. As he passed through, Mark Twain mused that in Bodie virtue versus vice made for exciting times, and he’d have it no other way. He was to add, “It was a plain wonder how man carried on under such circumstances.”
About The Author
Award-winning documentary filmmaker and author Nicholas Clapp has studied, filmed, and written the deserts of the world. With a master’s degree in cinema from the University of Southern California, his first professional break came when he produced and directed The Great Mojave Desert, a one-hour special for CBS and the National Geographic Society. He has won over 70 major film awards for his documentary work.
Book Summary
| Title | Bodie: Good Times & Bad |
| Author | Nicholaw Clapp |
| Publisher | Sunbelt Publishing |
| Pages | 112 Pages |