At a glance:
- Author: Bret Harte
- First Published: 1869
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: 1853-1854
- Setting: Sandy Bar, a fictional Western mining town
- Characters: The narrator, Tennessee’s partner, Tennessee, Judge Lynch
- Genres: Social realism, Short fiction
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Gambling, Nineteenth century, Friendship, Capital punishment, Mines, miners, or mining, Theft, Westerns, Frontier or pioneer life
- Locales: United States, West (U.S.), North America, Sandy Bar (fictive)
The Story
The unnamed narrator explains that the real name of Tennessee’s Partner has—in accordance with Sandy Bar’s quixotic practice of rechristening new arrivals—never been known in the mining town. The locals have dubbed the man “Tennessee’s Partner” because he teamed up with Tennessee, a wholly disreputable character whose own real name has been similarly obliterated from communal memory.
The narrator goes on to relate the story of Tennessee’s Partner’s search for a bride. A year earlier, in 1853, the man set out for San Francisco from Poker Flat...
(The entire page is 1610 words.)
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