A Ghost Town on the Yellowstone
About this ebook
So, in A Ghost Town on the Yellowstone, which was first published in 1948, Mr. Paul reaches back to the year 1907 and to his youthful adventures on a project of the United States Reclamation Service in Montana. With him you start on one of the oddest stagecoach rides in history—a ride in which no matter how the passengers change at various stops their number is always thirteen, a circumstance to make the driver consult his whisky jug more frequently than usual. The hapless coach—jinxed to the whiffletrees, overturns, dumps its passengers into the sagebrush and thus precipitates the founding of the town of Trembles. Thanks to Mr. Paul's keen observation (vitamin enriched and thoroughly irradiated) you meet the first citizens of Trembles—a saloonkeeper, two Chinese, a scissorbill, and a woman somewhat less ancient than the profession she follows. Thenceforth you participate in some of the most astonishing, humorous and touching events ever to take place in that part of the Wild West. To tell you more would be to cheat you of your full quota of agreeable surprises.
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About the author
Elliot Harold Paul (February 10, 1891 - April 7, 1958) was an American journalist and author.
Born in Linden, a part of Malden, Massachusetts, he graduated from Malden High School. In 1914 he worked as a reporter covering legislative events at the State House in Boston. In 1917 he joined the U.S. Army Signals Corps to fight in WWI, serving in France during the Battle of Saint-Mihiel and in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. He returned home after the war to a job as a journalist and also began writing books, inspired in part by his military experiences.
In 1925 he moved to Paris, France, working at the Chicago Tribune's International Edition (so-called Paris Edition), before joining the literary journal, transition, as co-editor. He later returned to the newspaper business—namely the Paris Herald (now the International Herald Tribune)—and wrote novels in his spare time. He then moved to the village of Santa Eulalia on the island of Ibiza and was caught in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, which inspired him to write Life and Death of a Spanish Town (1937). Forced to flee Spain, he returned to Paris and produced detective fiction, featuring the amateur sleuth Homer Evans, as well as crafting what is considered as one of his best works, The Last Time I Saw Paris (1942).
Back in the U.S., following the outbreak of WWII, Paul turned to screenwriting. Between 1941 and 1953, he participated in the writing of ten screenplays in Hollywood, the most remembered of which is the 1945 production, Rhapsody in Blue (1945). He also wrote the screenplay for New Orleans (1947), a fictional history of Storyville jazz featuring Billie Holiday in her only acting role.
A talented pianist, he frequently supplemented his income by playing at local clubs in the Los Angeles area.
Elliot Paul died in 1958 in Providence, Rhode Island, aged 67.
