Reading Local Seattle

The murders of nearly three dozen Chinese gold miners in a massacre in Wallowa County, Oregon in 1887 was a long-buried story, a (now-retired) reporter for The Oregonian, began writing about it in 1995. "In lives lost, the Hells Canyon massacre was the worst crime committed by whites against the approximately 300,000 Chinese who immigrated to the United States in the second half of the 19th century," he writes, adding that despite apparent knowledge of the perpetrators, only a few were ever brought to trial. All of those were acquitted, and the trial paperwork "mislaid" for decades. His book, Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon (Oregon State University Press), is the product of many years of research. The Oregonian cited Massacred for Gold as one of the top ten books by Northwest authors in 2009.