The Golden Fortress

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What to expect

In February 1936, Los Angeles police officers drove hundreds of miles to California’s state borders with one mission: turn back anyone deemed too poor to enter.

Myths of the Golden State’s abundance enticed thousands of Americans uprooted by the Depression, but those who created those myths saw only invading criminal “hordes” that they believed just one man could stop: James “Two-Gun” Davis, Los Angeles’ authoritarian police chief.

The Golden Fortress tells the story of Davis’s audacious deployment of hand-picked armed police slamming California’s door on America’s Dust Bowl refugees and Depression-displaced migrants. It depicts the sometimes deadly consequences of law enforcement politicized and weaponized against the poor, even in remote places like Modoc County, where a sheriff’s opposition to the blockade inflamed an already smoldering feud between an itinerant newsman and a publisher obsessed with her California heritage.

Davis, blessed by his city’s ruling business class and fueled by his own wild claims of communist conspiracies undermining America, deployed his “Foreign Legion” to California’s state lines, threatening democracy even as the nation’s cities and rural communities juggled the burdens of economic recovery, migrant aid, and public safety.

Critics Review

  • “Lascher makes history come alive in this tale of the LAPD, migrants, xenophobia, economic anxiety, and the ever-present myths of California and belonging. The past feels present in his cogent, compelling history.”

    Edan Lepucki, New York Times bestselling author
  • “History at its most alive: gripping, detailed, and compassionate. The story of a big city and a small town in a standoff over what America should be.”

    Eric Nusbaum, author of Stealing Home
  • “A lively narrative that touches on…the militarization of borders, freedom of movement, and the politics of fear. A great read.”

    Kathryn S. Olmsted, author of Right out of California
  • “Masterfully researched…This oft-forgotten episode from California’s past has never been more relevant than today.”

    Nathan Masters, host and executive producer of Lost L.A.

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