Treasure in the Dust: Enduring Gold and Silver's Century of Divorce

TREASURE IN THE DUST is, in part, a biography of Hale C. Tognoni and follows his dual-career as geological engineer and mining lawyer. His recorded observations run the distance from the West's highest peaks to the depths of man's entreneurial intrusions into the earth's firey interior. Even so, it is the mysteries of our human condition which have occupied his thoughts. The poetry of TREASURE IN THE DUST comes from the realm where Tognoni, the engineer, and Tognoni, the lawyer, meet.

To tell the story, the author draws on the lives of forgotten U.S. mining heroes: William Morris Stewart, W. C. Ralston, Adolph Sutro, Waldemar Lindgren, S.F. Emmmons, Clarence King, George Wingfield, Herbert Hoover,and Key Pittman among others.

First published as AFTER THE GOLD RUSH, serialized in the WESTERN PROSPECTOR AND MINER. Below is an excerpt from a review of the book by that publication's editor and publisher, V. Lee Oertie.

...the most important addition to the lore of early Western mining we've seen in years.

...an amazing book...The Tognoni family history was the basis for this highly readable volume. It is a story, or rather many stories, of the early American mining scene as told through the eyes of actual participants, but with an important difference. Author Boudway pulls no punches about personal quirks of the Tognoni ancestral chain. Where there were chinks in the armor, she does not flinch or kick them under the rug.

...Throughout this hefty volume of 16 chapters and hundreds of pages of historic value, much intimate detail of the way things were done is woven ito the story...Sutter's Fort, Virginia City, Goldfield, and a hundred other place names that ring bells in every miner's head. The daily struggle to find, claim, and develop mining claims is the strongest thread in the narrative...I was surprised to learn...that prospectors circa 1880 era were as subject to bureaucratic bungling as they are today.

...should you want something with meat in it, this book is handled in a way few others about this historic business have been.

OTHER REVIEWERS: "An extraordinary book" - The Arizona Daily Star