Aftershocks

In 1906, an earthquake devastated San Francisco. Aftershocks follows the lives of several people who are caught in the quake and struggle to survive. There's an architect more interested in his career than his family; a photographer who struggles to record the faces she sees on the ruined streets; a mssionary girl who thinks an evil city is being punished; a corrupt city engineer who finds himself responsible for plague; and a soldier obsessed with the loot he can snatch in the ruins of the city.

There are acts of heroism and sacrifice, courage and cowardice, kindness and cruelty, as these and other victims of the quake struggle with chaos and thirst and starvation in a dying city. And there are the celebrities too, including opera tenor Enrico Caruso, who flees the city never to return, and John Barrymore, who manages to drink his way through the devastation.

This is a story with historical sweep, an epic that takes the reader to all the dark and bright corners of the beautiful city on the bay.