The first paragraphs, chapter 1, of a new historic fiction novel currently being written by fauxlaw.
Dateline 1: New Year’s Day, 1921
"When the Ambassador Hotel opened in Los Angeles on New Year's Day, 1921, Wilshire Boulevard did not yet exist. It was a dirt road through bean and barley fields. The 24-acre site was once a dairy farm. By whatever name the dirt road was then known, prior to 1921, it did not care to be remembered.
"When the Ambassador Hotel opened in Los Angeles on New Year's Day, 1921, Wilshire Boulevard did not yet exist. It was a dirt road through bean and barley fields. The 24-acre site was once a dairy farm. By whatever name the dirt road was then known, prior to 1921, it did not care to be remembered.
"Forgetting may be appropriate because, although the eventual hotel at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard was a grand palace, it was virtually inaccessible until this major thoroughfare of Los Angeles, from the hotel’s location 12 miles inland to the ocean at Santa Monica Beach, was fully paved. The hotel’s Coconut Grove nightclub became the hunting ground of elite Hollowood.[1] But the hotel’s demise began less than 50 years later when the kitchen pantry off the long, north side of the Embassy Ballroom became the assassination field of Robert F Kennedy [Bobby], who just won the 1968 California Democrat primary election for the presidency of the United States. He was destined to be the Democrat Party nominee, but he was dead before ever making that dateline in Chicago.
"'So…' Bobby Kennedy said, concluding a victory speech to the crowded, boisterously joyful room, his last public words, a few minutes after midnight on June 6,' … my thanks to all of you and on to Chicago and let's win there,'" he exulted, referring to the upcoming Democrat National Convention."
[1] The author calls L.A.’s Hollywood “Hollywood.” The author lived in Brentwood [West L.A.] and attended the primary victory party June 5, 1968 as a teen volunteer for Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
© 2025 by fauxlaw
