It's April 1906 and opera singer Gemma Garland has just arrived in San Francisco ahead of a series of performances in the Met's touring production of Carmen (in the chorus, but hey, it's still the Met!). When she gets into town, however, she learns that her friend, artist Nellie, with whom she was going to stay, has disappeared. Soon, however, Gemma has found herself a wealthy patron and is set to be the toast of the town. Meanwhile, orphaned Suling is doing everything she can to avoid her gambling-addicted uncle from selling her off in marriage. What neither Gemma nor Suling can predict, however, is the deadly earthquake that will destroy the city in the middle of all of their plans.
In the afterword to this book, the authors note that the more they learned about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the more things they wanted to include in the book, and how hard it was to take things out. After trying to summarize it above, I'm realizing that they could have cut out several other elements to make it a bit less convoluted. The characters and overall plot were interesting (I'd definitely read a book about real-life botanist Alice Eastwood, fiction or nonfiction!), though I don't think the earthquake itself added much to the story as a whole — and considering the importance of setting in historical fiction, that's not a great thing. It was an interesting book, but it won't be topping my list of favorite historical fictions.
*This book comes out Feb. 13.
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