Vera

Vera by Carol Edgarian, 317 pages

Vera Johnson is 15 years old when the 1906 earthquake decimates her hometown of San Francisco. Because she's the daughter of an influential and notorious madam, Vera and her foster sister Pie have the connections to figure out a way to keep out of the worst post-quake situations, but still their future is uncertain. This is the story of how they learn to survive, and how Vera learns how to use what few gifts she was given by her mother and unknown father.

This may be the first historical fiction I've read about the 1906 quake, and it certainly covers the gamut of what was going on at the time, from Chinatown to Nob Hill. Before reading this, I wasn't aware of the extent of the damage, nor how quickly it occurred or how the corrupt city government impacted it. An intriguing coming-of-age story with an interesting disaster backdrop.

After the Quake: Stories

After the Quake: Stories by Haruki Murakami, 181 pages. Translated by Jay Rubin, audio read by Rupert Degas and Teresa Gallagher.

Six brief stories, all in some way revolving around the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, by one of the world's great writers. "UFO in Kushiro" tels the story of a man whose wife leaves him after the quake, accusing him in a letter of having nothing inside him. Events later in the story reinforce her claims.
The first half of the book is very good, but the second half, containing the stories "Thailand," "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo," and "Honey Pie," is even better. The stories are strong, resonant with odd details, and filled with deep repressed feelings. Each of these tales has there own unique charm. The stories dwell on their character's unrelieved loneliness, their own emptiness, and the failed communications in their lives. The characters each attempt to restore normalcy and balance to their post-quake existences.
I particularly liked that the character Frog, in the story "Super Frog saves Tokyo" tries to impress on his human counterpart the importance of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

Batman: Cataclysm

Batman:  Cataclysm by Chuck Dixon and many, many others; graphic novel; 320 pages. 

Gotham is still recovering from the devastating plague from Contagion, when a catastrophic earthquake suddenly hits the city.  Cataclysm follows the heroes of the Bat-family as they try to save a city that may not be able to be saved. 


My original plan for this weekend was to start the No Man's Land story, but I realized that I should do this right and start at the beginning.  Of course, if I was really doing this right, I'd have started with Contagion, but I have to wait for that one to arrive via interlibrary loan (I'll review it later this summer!). 

I enjoyed Cataclysm a lot more than I expected, partly because the book doesn't focus exclusively on Batman.  In fact, Batman is missing for large chunks of the story, to the extent that the other characters wonder if he's alive or dead.  The storytelling was really well-done here:  many issues contained several small, three-to-five page stories told from the victims' point of view.  So we get the story as seen by the mother trapped under a car with her son, or the family caught in the basement of their building while it slowly floods from a broken water main.  And while most of those stories end with Nightwing or Batman rescuing the narrators, there is a surprisingly large number of civilian deaths in this collection.  Which adds to the realism, if nothing else.  The few appearances from Batman's Rogue's Gallery are brief--enough to hint at things to come, but not enough to take the spotlight off the real devastation.   (Some favorite appearances include a wonderfully amoral voice-over from Ra's al Ghul which just begs to be read aloud, and a three-page mini-story showing the Penguin choosing who to save--only those whose skills he thinks he can use.  On the non-villain side of things, I also had a lot of fun with the encounter between Harvey Bullock and Anarky at the start of the book). 

That said, this is still a Batman story, and so it needs a main villain.  That villain is an opportunist going by "Quakemaster" who takes quickly claims responsibility for the quake and threatens to cause another if his demands are not met.  No one knows whether he's bluffing or actually capable of causing another earthquake, so on top of saving the millions of people who are trapped or injured, and stopping the gangs of looters roving the streets, Batman & Co. also have to track down and stop this guy before he can cause more panic. 

As with most cross-over events, the art her varies widely as we jump from title to title, as did the writing.  I got another glimpse of Stephanie Brown in the Spoiler story included here, and I continue to be unimpressed by her as a character. I know that this story has to occur before the War Games series, but I wonder how closely they follow one another.  Because I find it hard to believe that Batman, the man who came up with what-if scenarios and game plans for every possible catastrophe that could happen in Gotham didn't have a plan for this.  Especially since we learn in the first act that Bruce Wayne has been expecting the quake to hit for some time, and has even gone so far as to hire a seismologist to monitor the fault lines near Gotham.   He'd even retroactively earthquake-proofed all Wayne Inc.-owned buildings on Gotham (with the exception of Wayne Manor, because he didn't want a work crew finding about that whole Bat-Cave situation.  Oops). 

Now, on to No Man's Land. 

Disaster! / Dan Kurtzman

Disaster! the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 by Dan Kurtzman. 296 p.

The second book I've read on this topic this month. This one is a little facile, but a much better popular history overview than the previous one. Kurtzman's book is better organized than Dennis Smith's (the other author), so it's much easier to follow what's going on.

Because most people with insurance were covered for fire but not earthquake, and because the city powers feared that no one would invest and rebuild if they were worried about earthquakes (uncontrollable) versus fire (preventable), people afterwards almost always talked about the fire rather than the earthquake. Yet nowadays it's almost always referred to as just an earthquake--I knew there was massive devastation in its wake, but until I started reading about it I had no idea about the scope of the fires.

San Francisco Is Burning / Dennis Smith

San Francisco is burning: the untold story of the 1906 earthquake and fires by Dennis Smith. 294 p.

There's some interesting stuff in this book, mainly about the military response to the fires--they spent a lot of time dynamiting and setting off black powder charges, which caused many more fires than they stopped, but the army didn't help fight fires at all. (The navy, particularly one lieutenant, did fire-fight, and helped save the wharves.) They did spend a lot of time forcing people to abandon their houses at bayonet-point, instead of letting them remain to fight the fires, which the author clearly thinks should have happened. He also alleges that the military shot a bunch a people. We get a lot of detail about fire-fighting, some description of the political and social situation both before and after the fires--especially about the graft trials--and some detail about individuals who were affected. The book is badly organized, though, and I found the multitude of individuals introduced at the beginning more confusing than anything--at least one of them isn't mentioned again for nearly 200 pages. Also, I found the writing style incredibly annoying, especially when the author kept describing what certain people were thinking right before they died. I'm looking forward to reading a different book on this topic.