Light in the Queen’s Garden: Ida May Pope, Pioneer for Hawai‘i’s Daughters; and An American Girl in the Hawaiian Islands: Letters of Carrie Prudence Winter, 1890–1893.
Bonura applied the "Page 99 Test" to her new book, The Sugar King of California: The Life of Claus Spreckels, and reported the following:
From page 99 [footnotes omitted]:Learn more about the book and author at Sandra E. Bonura's website.The transaction caused a huge uproar with cries of “land grabber.” In 1880 the going rate for land in Maui was about $1.50 an acre, making the crown lands worth around $1.5 million. Princess Ruth’s claim to a half interest in the lands would then be estimated, not at the paltry $10,000 Claus paid but at $750,000.29 The sale was hotly contested and legally questioned throughout the Hawaiian kingdom. First and foremost, members of the ruling monarchy believed that Princess Ruth’s legal claim to the crown lands was debatable because she “had no estate, right, title or interest of any description in the crown lands.” Liliʻuokalani was angry: “Mr. Spreckels paid the Princess Ruth $10,000 to release her claim to a small tract of these lands, although she had never ascended the throne.” It was true the princess herself never took the throne, and some royals, behind her back, questioned her self-claimed close genealogical relationship with the Kamehamehas.Page 99 was revealing to me in that it made my biography subject look like a hated monopolist which is dispelled later in the book. So, if I were an average person and asked to look at page 99, I would think …oh here is another rich guy who pushed his way up the ladder with force. I’m not reading it.
Claus sought legal advice in both San Francisco and Hawaiʻi to ensure he had a plausible claim to the land, and came away with conflicting opinions, but most concluded that his position was “legally weak.” Nevertheless, some haoles in the Hawaiian legislature were more than happy to assert that he had good title to those crown lands: his real estate deal would set a precedent for the sale of prime crown lands, and if he could own some of the best agricultural lands in the kingdom, perhaps they could too! However, those legislators who claimed that Claus had a weak legal case “feared the power of his money to hire the best legal talent and, one way or another, get title to half the crown lands.” Realizing they couldn’t finance a long and drawn- out lawsuit by Claus, the Hawaiian legislature, out of sheer frustration, was persuaded to quiet any subsequent claims of his by passing the contentious Act to Authorize the Commissioners of Crown Lands to Convey Certain Portions of Such Lands to Claus Spreckels in Satisfaction of All Claims He May Have on Such Lands. Since Claus had previously been leasing the land under a thirty-year contract for $1,000 per annum, he settled the case for $30,000 in “lost lease money and the future value of less than .05% of the Crown Lands.” Once this compromise was signed on August 11, 1882, the kingdom finally conveyed the 24,000 agricultural acres to Claus.
Princess Ruth had been suffering from heart disease for some time and likely paid little attention to all the legal commotion surrounding the act. She died at fifty-seven, just nine months later. In her will she left everything, including 353,000 acres of Kamehameha lands, to her cousin Princess Bernice
The Page 99 Test doesn't work very well for my book. A prospective reader would get a better sense of the book from this take:Sandra Bonura is the first biographer to give a heart and soul to Claus Spreckels, his era’s [Elon] Musk. Fiercely independent, resourceful, and combative, Spreckels arguably altered the history of California more than anyone in his time. In this deeply researched biography Bonura paints a complete tapestry of Spreckels’s complicated business and family life, wealth beyond imagination, and the incredible drive of a titan without peer.That's from Victor J. Dicks, author of Forsaken Kings: Emma Spreckels, the Surfer of Asbury Park.
--Marshal Zeringue
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