Introduction -- Working on the railroad -- Hell-bent for promontory summit -- How to be very, very unpopular -- Ambrose Bierce at a low point -- Anatomy of the funding bill -- Bierce at war again -- The beast emerges from within Frank Norris -- Norris picks up a rake -- Mussel slough under a microscope -- Endings

The notorious Central Pacific Railroad riveted the attention of two great American writers: Ambrose Bierce and Frank Norris. Drabelle tells a classic story of corporate greed vs. the power of the pen. The Central Pacific Railroad accepted US Government loans; but, when the loans fell due, the last surviving founder of the railroad avoided repayment. Bierce, at the behest of his boss William Randolph Hearst, swung into action writing over sixty stinging articles that became a signal achievement in American journalism. Later, Norris focused the first volume of his trilogy, The Octopus, on the freight cars of a thinly disguised version of the Central Pacific