Vera Johnson lives between two worlds in 1906 San Francisco. Her mother Rose runs the city's most famous brothel, while Vera stays with a family paid to raise her. At fifteen, she moves between Rose's world of opera tickets and corrupt politicians and her guardians' violent, poverty-stricken home. The great earthquake changes everything. Fire consumes the shattered city as looters compete with the injured and starving for survival. Vera and her innocent sister Pie find themselves alone. Vera throws aside social rules and starts building something new. She teams up with Tan, once her enemy, and creates a makeshift family from other survivors. Together they must find their way past the disaster to forge new lives.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: San Francisco
Period: 1906
329 pages · ebook
Content warnings: violence