The Poker Bride

Before 1849, the Chinese in the United States were little more than curiosities. But when Gold Rush fever gripped the globe, thousands of Chinese immigrants came through San Francisco to seek a fortune. In The Poker Bride, Christopher Corbett uses the legend of one extraordinary woman-now the stuff of Idaho lore-as a lens into this Chinese experience. When the gold rush receded, it left behind Polly Bemis, who narrowly escaped life as a concubine and settled in the remote Idaho hills with a white man who had won her in a poker game.
Christopher Corbett vividly constructs a tale of the real American West: a place where the first Chinese flooded the country and left their mark long after the craze for gold had vanished.