9009 James Hopper & Fred R. Bechdolt Literature & Poetry

8vo. 195 pp. Blue cloth stamped with white in rare publisher's dust jacket. Some scraping of white on spine; wear to extremities; foxing inside front cover, very good in very good dust jacket (wear & creasing to extremities; light general soiling). James Hopper and Frederick Bechdolt were fellow authors and members of the bohemian art colony fomed in Carmel following the 1906 earthquake, along with Jack London, Mary Austin, George Sterling, and others. Together, they wrote about the corrupt condition of American prisons and the need for reform. Inspired by true events, their unsentimental "fact-story" tells of John Collins, 9009, a convict fully deserving of his sentence, who enters prison with the sincere hope that he can make good. What he discovers, however, is a wholly corrupt system hell-bent on breaking him little by little, injustice by injustice, until he erupts with a calculated, bloodthirsty vengeance.