This is definitely a rich and splendid romance.
- Paperback: 544 pages
- Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark (April 1, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 9781402222696
- ISBN-13: 978-1402222696
Genre: Historical Fiction
My Rating: 4.5 of 5.0
Product Description:
Set in the tumultuous aftermath of San Francisco’s devastating 1906 earthquake and fire, and based on the lives of several women apprenticed to famed Julia Morgan, California’s first licensed woman architect, this historical novel tells of the fiercely-fought competition between Nob Hill hotels to re-open their doors by the first anniversary of the disaster–proving to the country and the world that the city would rise from the ashes. Amelia Hunter Bradshaw, fresh from earning her certificate in architecture at the prestigious L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, finds herself, through a series of flukes and mishaps, in the employ of the one man determined to best Miss Morgan, Amelia’s mentoress and friend. Intrigue, political corruption, and an undeniable attraction to the mysterious James Diaz Thayer threaten not only to jeopardize her personal life, but also prove fatal to all she holds dear.
Review: This is a beautifully rich romance.
Amelia Bradshaw is a beautiful, bright woman who studied architecture in France. She returns to San Francisco to take over her Grandfather’s famous Bay View hotel. Unfortunately her father has lost the hotel in a poker game to James Diaz (J.D.) Thayer, the son of a city leader, and Ezra Kemp, a corrupt social climber. Amelia loses the legal battle for the hotel and agrees to work at night with her old school friend Julia Morgan who has already established an architecture office.
As Amelia begins to close up one dawn she feels the building shake. She is aware of pencils rattling in a cup and then she is struggling to get out of the building and stay alive. She dazedly seeks her father at the gambling club next to the Bay View and finds J.D. injured, her father with a broken back under a table and others dead. Amelia’s father insists that she look for the cards he had as he claims that he won the hotel back with a royal flush but she only has three of the cards.
The fires that follow the quakes destroy the Bay View and the nearly completed Fairmont Hotel. The owners of the Fairmont begin to rebuild with the goal of opening by the one year anniversary of the quake. J.D. decides that he too will re-build the Bay View and the race begins. Julia Morgan’s firm is working on both structures until she fires Amelia over a disagreement. J.D. wants Amelia to be his architect so she stays on that project while Julia’s firm continues the work on the Fairmont.
The Bay View rebuilding is plagued with lack of materials and labor. The labor unions won't allow the use of the Chinese but Amelia and J.D. secretly use their labor at night. But the hotel suffers from sabotage as Ezra threatens J.D. to repay loans. Amelia and J.D. grow close as they work together on rebuilding. Then Ezra blackmails J.D. insisting that J.D. marry his daughter. Even though Amelia has hoped for more, she begins to believe that J.D. only cares about the building and not about her.Will they be able to complete the Bay View before the Fairmont is completed? And who will own the Bay View when it is completed?
The story is strong on details of the quake and fire. Even though some of the statistics reflected in the story were very interesting, I wasn’t sure that such precise details of the fire heat and extensive damage would be known so soon after the disaster. I enjoyed the vivid and rich descriptions of the earthquake and the rebuilding. The characters are well developed and the interactions, from hate to love, between Amelia and J.D. are emotional, natural and make for a splendid romance. I look forward to reading more by this author.
xxx
Thank you to Sourcebooks for the book to read and review.
This giveaway is limited to US entries because of the weight of the book. I hope many of you were able to get a copy of this marvelous book at the reduced price offered last week.
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come from?
In the chaos following the quake and fire in San Francisco, all the other local designers and builders were taken, except for the “Lady Architect,” who, at that point in her fledgling career, had a hard time getting hired--so Julia Morgan got the gig! It was a fluke, really. Later on, she gained great fame as the architect and builder of the Shangri-la known as Hearst Castle on the central California coast—constructed during the years 1919 to 1947.
Ciji: My nonfiction (the latest of which is Rightsizing Your Life: Simplifying Your Surroundings While Keeping What Matters Most) has parts of my own story woven throughout all the factual and prescriptive material in such a “self-help” genre. When it comes to fiction, my commitment to getting the facts right (even if I’m chasing a story that’s two-hundred-years old) has brought after researching and writing six historical novels to the subject of “What were the women doing in history?” And that’s probably because I was “the only woman in the room” years ago in many of my on-air jobs--a female broadcasting pioneer, I guess you’d say—and so I’m always seeking to find other women in earlier eras who broke those barriers in their fields. I found women playwrights at Covent Garden and Drury Lane theatres in London; I discovered women musicians in the court of Marie Antoinette; I uncovered women artists working for Josiah Wedgwood in his pottery factories. I think my own experiences of working in fields dominated in the twentieth century mostly by men has been a central theme in my own fiction.
Ciji: That’s actually been a problem in my career—I cannot research and write a decent historical novel in a year. Because I’m such a stickler for the facts--and because I earn a living by my writing; it’s not a hobby--I have to work simultaneously at writing jobs that actual pay money. That has meant I always had a “day job” writing, as with my 17 years at ABC in LA, or I’d stop to write a nonfiction book which I found paid a living wage, or take a gig, as I did last year, writing a 9-part series for AARP, The Magazine. Since my background was as a reporter (and even with the Internet saving huge amounts of time), I still insist on “going there” to see and experience what I’m writing about. That has meant eight trips to Scotland; many to France, New Orleans, Natchez, or wherever else I set my books, since the setting is just as much a “character” in my books as the heroines and heroes. My first novel took five years; Wicked Company took three; and I managed to do the paranormal historicals like Julia Street, A Light on the Veranda, and A Cottge by the Sea in two years. My publishers would rather it be different, but they know I’m not a lazy bones…just fanatically thorough, I guess you’d say.
