Ancestors By the Author of Black Oxen Author:Gertrude Atherton After her husband's death, in 1887, Gertrude Atherton was free to pursue her writing career as a protégée of Ambrose Bierce, eventually writing 60 books and numerous articles and short stories. She is best remembered for her "California Series," several novels and short stories dealing with the social history of California. The series includes T... more »he Splendid, Idle Forties (1902); The Conqueror (1902), which is a fictionalized biography of Alexander Hamilton; and her sensational, semi-autobiographical novel Black Oxen (1923), about a middle-aged woman who miraculously becomes young again after glandular therapy. "Ancestors" was originally published in 1907.« less