Vera by Carol Edgarian
This review was published in the San Francisco Examiner on June 27, 2021https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/to-find-out-what-life-in-sf-was-like-after-the-1906-quake-read-vera/
For less than one minute on the morning of April 18th, 1906, San Francisco was shaken to its core. Buildings crumbled, fires raged and most of downtown San Francisco was destroyed. Carol Edgarian’s recent novel ‘Vera’ allows us to visit that time and place. Blending history with a coming-of-age story, this immersive novel chronicles the ’06 earthquake and its aftershocks. By the book’s end, we come to admire both Vera, the eponymous protagonist, and the citizens of San Francisco for their gritty resiliency in the quake’s aftermath.
We meet Vera in the first two pages. Now more than a hundred years old, she recalls how the quake changed her life. She begins her story on her fifteenth birthday, nine days before the earthquake. Vera is looking forward to seeing her mother, Rose, with whom she does not live. Rose is a famous San Francisco madam who operates a bordello in the bawdy Barbary Coast. When Vera was a toddler, Rose had arranged for Vera to be raised by a widow named Elsa Johnson. In return, Rose pays the household expenses for Elsa and her daughter Piper.
Minutes after the shaking stops on April 18th, further waves of catastrophe shatter the City. Elsa Johnson is crushed to death by a falling wall while Vera and Piper escape encroaching fires. The narration includes intricate details of how Vera and Piper survive those next few harrowing days. The City’s infrastructure has been decimated. Gas and electric lines are broken, water cisterns are cracked, and fires threaten almost every City block. A parade of evacuees flees from downtown to the western part of the City, where refugee camps are eventually established at Golden Gate Park, the Presidio and Lafayette Square. San Francisco looks like a war zone.
Vera eventually rescues her biological mother, Rose, under a pile of rubble in her Barbary Coast bordello and arranges for her to be transported to a hospital. Soon Vera is taking care of Rose while trying to understand her enigmatic and remote mother. Vera grows up quickly and joins forces with one of her mother’s loyal employees, a Chinese man named Tan. Like the City, Vera is determined and tenacious to move forward. As San Franciscans abandon social norms to focus on survival, Vera begins to imagine a different life for herself. She encounters looters and luminaries, heroes and hucksters as she learns to navigate this troubled world. With ease, Edgarian weaves historical characters into the story. Earlier in 1906, San Francisco Mayor Eugene Schmitz had been facing charges of bribery and extortion. Due to the upheaval, the indictment is delayed. Vera and Piper are friends with the Mayor’s daughter, and thus, readers are given a more personal perspective of this famous scandal.
Vera’s coming-of-age story was less compelling to this reader than the historical narrative. I struggled with Vera’s voice when her interactions with adults seemed implausible. Nonetheless, in terms of historical fiction, Edgarian succeeds. Her meticulous research is impressive. She includes countless facts, both large and small, about the quake’s effects on the City’s political, military, architectural and financial life.
In 1989 San Francisco suffered another tragic tremor. Both ’06 and ’89 were seismic events that linger in the foggy mist of the City’s collective memory. A wary acceptance of the possibility of another quake remains part of San Francisco’s ethos. ‘Vera’ is a reverent ode to the resiliency of San Francisco and her people. If you wonder what it might have felt like to be in the 1906 earthquake, ‘Vera’ is a great place to start.