In the summer of 1918, a federal prosecutor arrived in Petersburg, Alaska, with a government vessel, a barrel of confiscated whiskey, and the authority of the United States Department of Justice. By morning, he had spent the night in the town's red-light district with two naval officers, and the saloon keeper who witnessed it was facing a sedition charge.

The case file — depositions, affidavits, bond documents, a coerced newspaper retraction, and a dismissal order — sat in a cedar chest in a family cabin for more than a century. Then a retired attorney opened the chest and brought it to a novelist.

The Mahogany Chest is built from those documents. Roberto Gomez, a Nicaraguan novelist living in Port Townsend, Washington, reconstructs the events of United States of America v. James Brennan — Case No. 559-KB, District of Alaska, Division No. One, 1918–1919 — from the actual sworn testimony of five women who came back to Alaska to testify about what happened the night of July 23rd. Their names are June Edwards, Gene White, Margaret Perry, Georgie Waldon, and Ora Gordan. Their words are in the record. This novel makes them available to readers who might recognize, in an Alaskan federal file from 1918, something they have seen in their own time.

For readers of Javier Cercas, Sergio Ramírez, Truman Capote, and literary historical fiction built from primary documents.