The Devil’s Daughter

by Eleazar Lipsky

This book is based on the “Senator William Sharon Scandal.”

Senator Sharon resided in San Francisco until his death there on November 13, 1885. His final years saw a legal battle that was the juiciest scandal of its time. Senator Sharon was alleged to have remarried a woman named Sarah Althea Hill, and he sued to have this alleged marriage cancelled. Judgment (in his favor) was rendered after his death, but the consequent legal proceedings, which included a Bowie knife fight in the courtroom of the Circuit Court for the Northern District of California, the physical beating of Justice Stephen Johnson Field of the US Supreme Court (by David S. Terry, a former Chief Judge of the California Supreme Court) and the fatal shooting of Terry by a US Marshal, both in the breakfast room of a California railroad hotel, which culminated in a landmark US Supreme Court decision in the case “In re Neagle (Cunningham v. Neagle)”, on the supremacy of federal law over state law.

634 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Eleazar Lipsky was a prosecutor, lawyer, novelist and playwright born in the Bronx, New York, USA. He wrote the novels that formed the basis of two very successful films, Kiss of Death and The People Against O'Hara (based on his detective novel). Other novels include Lincoln McKeever (1953), The Devil's Daughter (1969) and The Scientists (1959), a Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

Reviews

[Paula Galvan · Rating 1 out of 5]

An obscure book about the law, reminiscent of Bonfires of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, but not nearly as good.