Why a Booktrail?
1890s: Loosely based on historical facts in 1890s San Francisco, this is a tale which marries fact and fiction of the Gilded Age
Sister Noon
What you need to know before your trail
1890s San Francisco
Lizzie Hayes is a volunteer at ‘Brown Ark’ the Ladies Relief Home, which is a residential facility for homeless children. Lizzie likes to dedicate her time to helping the children. In fact this is her life – considered a middle aged spinster, she sees her role in life here.
One day an orphan named Jenny comes to the home. Jenny is a strange and mysterious child who tells fanciful tales and causes problems at the home. The woman who brings her here, Mary Ellen Pleasant, is also somewhat of an enigma. Whispers of a mysterious past and rumoured voodoo practices follow her around.
These two people will change Lizzie’s life forever.
Travel Guide
San Francisco in the gilded age – a town full of quirky characters with mysterious pasts and even shadier presents. The city is one with a unique past too – once a major focal point of the Gold Rush and all the excitement and activity that entailed, there is now a city in flux. a city on the move and one where voodoo is not too far away.
“In the 1850s, most of the people who made up San Francisco’s society had once been or still were distinctly disreputable”
The Brown Ark is the home which acts as a barrier to the outside world and an escape from it although for one girl, Jenny, she is the target of jibes and unkindness since she is new to the home, spins elaborate tales and not like the others. No’ one seems to know how her parents are. The home is brown and staid in contrast to the glittering city outside.
By the 1890s San Francisco was an entirely different city from the one Mrs Radford had left behind. The streets were paved. The sand was landscaped. Cable Cars ran up and down Nob Hill.
“The city was propelled in equal parts by drunken abuse and sober recompense”
Mrs Pleasant is a lady who saunters into the city shrouded by mystery and secrets. She was a former slave and there are whispers of a dubious past. Voodoo features but her real quirk is having been a housekeeper for several figures in the city so she knows the nuances of this world better than most. One house she worked at was called ‘the House of mystery’
When three such different characters come in contact with one another against a backdrop of a city in flux, with mysticism, family, women, and race relations in 1890s San Francisco battling with the famous fog.
Streetview Maps
3) San Francisco : Market Street
Lizzie loves the Market Street parades
Lizzie loves the Market Street parades
5) San Francisco : Geary and Franklin
Where the ladies protection society is located
Where the ladies protection society is located
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Web: karenjoyfowler.com
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