Showdown at Truckee describes these men in the context of nineteenth-century racial and gender attitudes. It retells historic events exactly as described in early court documents, newspapers and personal letters. Underneath the violent surface, however, ordinary people struggled with recession, remote bureaucracies, under-funded law enforcement and fire protection, the homeless, fraud, immigration, jobs, trespass and the price of winter underwear. From start to finish respectability and authority collide with petty hoodlums, vigilantes and racial terrorists. According to legend Jake Teeter represented authority and Jim Reed represented vigilantism.
Historic records reveal they both made choices to support or oppose atrocious acts.
One ended ridiculed and reviled the other alone and forgotten.