With details about grim and grisly fatalities, this history of California's arcane deaths encompasses the murders and accidents that at one time shocked the West Coast. The stories of hangings, gun accidents, suicides, crashes, and overdoses of both the famous and obscure offer a bizarre and light-hearted, if sometimes perverse, glimpse into the Golden State's strange past. From the tragic tale of 14 tourists swept to their deaths over Vernal Fall in pastoral Yosemite National Park and the gritty details of Bob "Bear" Hite overdosing on heroin in a seedy Hollywood nightclub to the shocking chronicle of a 10-ton jet crashing into a Bay Area kitchen, this zany collection is delightfully weird and enthrallingly human.