CBR 17 Bingo: Family – Central to Vera’s story is a desire for a family in which she can truly belong, and her outside status with both her birth mother and her foster family.
Vera has always lived under the shadow of a great secret – though raised as the younger daughter in a Swedish household, she is actually the daughter of San Francisco’s greatest madams. In the aftermath of the great earthquake of 1906, these worlds come tumbling together.
I remember it was a curious trend a few years ago that a number of historical novels set during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake all came out at once. Being interested in disaster stories, I put some of them on my reading list. Vera is another one of them,
Edgarian brings turn-of-the-century San Francisco vividly to life right from the start, and I enjoyed learning not only about the effects of the earthquake on the city but about city politics and the corruption that ran rampant. To this end, Edgarian weaves historical figures like disgraced mayor Eugene Schmitz and larger-than-life artist’s model Alma De Bretteville into Vera’s life with impressive realism. I also enjoyed the complicated relationship between Vera and her natural mother Rose, as well as the begrudging bond she gains with her mother’s Chinese servant, Tan.
However, I did feel that the story meandered without going anywhere in particular, and I found myself frustrated with the resolution of Vera’s relationships with her foster sister Pie and with Bobby. Though it’s meant to be a coming of age story, I didn’t really feel that Vera had necessarily changed very much by the end of the story, though she certainly does become a more capable person. A bit more direction was sorely needed.
I listened to the audiobook of this book, which is narrated by Kathe Mazur. I thought she did a good job of capturing Vera’s world-weary yet still youthful voice.