Train Robber's Daughter: The Melodramatic Life of Eva Evans, 1876-1970

Train Robber’s Daughter is a thoroughly-researched, fully-footnoted biography of the daughter of one of the most notorious outlaws of the American West. In 1893, seventeen-year-old Eva appeared in a blood-and-thunder melodrama in San Francisco, playing herself. She found fame as an actress, reliving on stage the manhunt for her father, Chris Evans, and her romance with his bandit partner, John Sontag. Her own fame flared brightly but eventually burned out. After enduring harsh criticism in the press, failed marriages, drug abuse and attempted suicide, she settled down to a long life, which included a career as a photographer, social activism and friendship with Emma Goldman, a long and successful marriage, and old age spent in a sleepy California seaside village. 318 pages (plus 16 page photo section) Endnotes, Bibliography, Index 24 b/w photos, 5 newspaper line illustrations

Jay O'Connell is the author of Co-Operative Dreams: A History of the Kaweah Colony and co-author of A Strength Born of Giants: The Life and Time of Dr. Forest Grunigen. He served as Executive Director of the Evans and Sontag Project, producing a permanent museum exhibit on Evans and Sontag for the Tulare County Museum. He is currently researching a narrative history entitled Battle Over Mineral King: Walt Disney, the Sierra Club and a Small California Town.