Big Alma: San Francisco's Alma Spreckels

Bernice Scharlach's sparkling biography of the beautiful, outrageous woman who was born on a farm in the Sunset District, scandalized San Francisco society, became an artists' model, posed for the statue at the top of the column in Union Square, who married Adolph Spreckels, befriended European royalty, brought the works of Auguste Rodin to America and built the Palace of the Legion of Honor to hold them, who lived in the grandest house in San Francisco, who fought two World Wars, invented the Garage Sale, and at age 57 chartered a plane and eloped with a cowboy.