This book deals with a sequence of lively and often bizarre episodes within San Francisco's Russian community set in motion in early 1888 by the arrival in San Francisco of a new Russian Orthodox bishop and his entourage, which included some twenty clergymen and eleven boys. It did not take long for the bishop to clash with Dr. Nicholas Russel, a colorful Russian revolutionary exile who was one of the leaders of the Russian community. They became bitter enemies, and Bishop Vladimir's three-and-a-half-year tenure in San Francisco was punctuated by a series of remarkable scandals and lawsuits, by an excommunication, by an unconsummated duel, and by a host of lurid allegations that received extensive local publicity including charges of arson, perjury, attempts to hire potential assassins, bigamy, and, most sensationally, sodomy and child abuse.