Frances Tip DeQuill -- affluent housewife, mother, and sometimes newspaper writer -- was mortified when the iron door clanked shut. Yes, she was locked up in the Bridgeport jail. Imprisonment marked the beginning of the price she would pay for investigating a sequence of ominous, unlikely events that had occurred close to Bridgeport and the nearby ghost town of Bodie, California.Frances had been obsessed trying to unravel the mystery of the strange things that had happened, much like prospectors who had been driven to seek Bodie's Veda Madre. No warnings, no threats, and not even jail could divert her attention. Her quest for a story would take her back in time to the gold rush days and urge her to chronicle the stories of eight strangers who had struggled to reach Bodie seeking gold, love, lust, adventure or revenge. Her strangers would interact with some of the best known characters from the Old West and they would experience many historical happenings. But nothing they suffered would prepare them for their bizarre departure from Bodie.Would Frances find the truth? Could she escape her hunters? Would she have time to expose the cover-up and find the real meaning of Bodie Gone?