The Audacity of Inez Burns: Dreams, Desire, Treachery, and Ruin in the City of Gold

San Francisco, until the mid-1940s, was a city that lived by its own rules, fast and loose. Formed by the gold rush and destroyed by the 1906 earthquake, it served as a pleasure palace for the legions of men who sought their fortunes in the California foothills. For the women who followed, their only choice was to support, serve, or submit.

Inez Burns was different. She put everyone to shame with her dazzling, calculated, stone-cold ambition.

Born in the slums of San Francisco to a cigar-roll...