Blaine Harden, a native of Eastern Washington state, is a Seattle-based author of many acclaimed books and a former foreign correspondent for major American newspapers.
What Whitman College President Penrose did not know—or did not care to know and would never be interested in learning— was that the book he had fallen in love with was an error-riddled recapitulation of Henry Spalding’s fabrications about Marcus Whitman. A fundraising narrative soon arose that saved the college.