Inside an unassuming room of the Huntington Library in Los Angeles, California, author Lisa See unfolds a stack of court records. At first glance, they look like a centuries-old love letter. The paper has yellowed from age, and the cursive is so ornate that the words are hard to make out.“This is the case of the Wing Chun store,” See explains. “This is where a lot of the violence happened.”The store was run by Sam Yuen, head of one of Los Angeles’ tongs, which were secret societies made up of men from China who often dabbled in illicit activities.The Chinese massacre of 1871 started in the doorway.Yuen’s lawsuit against the mayor was not the only record that told the story of what became known as the “Night of Horrors”. While researching her latest novel, Daughters of the Sun and Moon, See pored over documents to uncover the cultural mood of the city leading up to the night when a mob of roughly 500 white and Latino Angelenos attacked the city’s Chinese residents and its aftermath.She discovered detailed cases of sex trafficking, kidnapping, torture, robberies, gunfights, lynchings and more. The City of Angels was not only the deadliest city in the Wild West, but the whole country. Even now, the massacre is considered the largest mass lynching in the state’s history.