The headwaters of Robbing the Pillars begin deep in the anthracite country of Pennsylvania and wind their way through mountain tributaries before reaching the Susquehanna River. These poems venture out west through smeared Nebraskan skies, up wild Washington waters, and into the Siskiyou Mountains as meteors split the sky on fire. They traverse the wet woods of Maine along the West Branch of the Penobscot River. They hike the Appalachian, Continental Divide, and Pacific Crest Trails. In the early coal mines of Pennsylvania, miners crawled into the deepest parts of the mines, set dynamite, and blew joists holding up walls in hopes of getting the last valuable rock before the mountain collapsed-robbing the pillars. The poems in Robbing the Pillars are the dynamite, the pillars, the rock, the mountain, and the miners. They embrace terrains familiar and forgotten-those which have been stripped and left to become wild again.

James MacLaren, a fugitive from Scotland, embarks on a new life in California, escaping his secrets but not his hatred for the upper class. He is a man always on his guard, leery of the entitled and wary of his own temper. While raising a beautiful, headstrong daughter, and denying his love for a woman he cannot have, he champions miners in their fight against the Coleridge Sierra speculators seeking to maneuver a mining industry monopoly. San Francisco s Judge Dandridge sees himself as a man of vision. But when retributions fail in his courtroom, reparations are administered in the back rooms of vigilante justice. His venal and mercenary machinations tie him to the powerful Sam Brannan, the Chinese Tong and a shadowy control of the governorship of California.