Shaketown: The Madam's Daughter--Now Available!

Published by Quile Press: Shaketown: The Madam's Daughter is the story of Cayley, an Irish servant who becomes the most powerful and wealthy madam in 1890s San Francisco, and her cohort, an educated Chinese immigrant in trouble with warring tong associations in Chinatown. Both struggle with prejudice--cultural and racial--and their own conceptions of good and evil. Together, they become leaders of an underworld elite. The glittering city, with its crytal-heavy hotels and squalid slums is the perfect, misty backdrop for this tale of family, both born- and chosen.

I worked on this book for ten years--getting the history right (especially since the book is based on a real character) was important for me; history played a big part in my travel books, and has always been a topic of interest. And I grew up on the outskirts of San Francisco, sure that it was the city of my dreams. I did end of moving there for many years, and I wasn't disappointed. Quite a few of the landmarks that appear in the novel are still in existence--maybe a walking tour will be created around it, who knows! You can purchase the book in E-format and as a paperback at Amazon and a number of other outlets including Book Country/Penguin Press.

No Gilded Cage for Victorian Women

Mrs. Lawrence Lewis

Late 19-century urban middle- or upper-class women--such as Shaketown's Mrs. Rolifer--were frequently characterized as "only a bird in a gilded cage", a song popular at the time. Such women were viewed as fragile and endangered; in the first 20 years of the new century, they increasingly began to flex their political muscle. The late 1890s brought major changes in the way many women interacted with the world at large. Though working-class women (often immigrants) like Cayley were brought into the work force the moment they could stand (child labor laws were either non-existent or not enforced), they usually filled positions of the lowest sort. Most women of this ilk were in survival mode. However, women in more stable situations were often at the forefront of movements such as suffrage, temperance and anti-corruption. Those without political connections sometimes paid a high price-- suffragettes such as Mrs. Lawrence (Dora) Lewis and Lucy Burns were beaten and starved for their political beliefs. Today, it's difficult to believe that women were considered property and were unable to vote until the hard-won passage of the 19th amendment in 1920, almost entirely due to the relentless self-sacrifice of women like these. This Snopes article refers to a true email that is circulated about members of NWP, the National Women's Party: http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/womenvote.asp

The REAL Ripper

The "real" Jack the Ripper--on whom Shaketown's Ripper was modeled--murdered five prostitutes in London in 1888.  He was never caught or identified, and may have been responsible for many more deaths. The murders occurred in Britain at a critical moment when feminist politics challenged social norms, and the country witnessed intense conflict over gender and class divisions--the unrest spread to America. Contradictory interpretations of feminine roles in society transformed the Ripper into a   cautionary tale, a mythic warning to women on the perils of sexuality. The Victorian separation of "proper" women into objects of chaste worship and "soiled doves" was one of the reasons for the popularity of prostitution. However, for many women, a foray into prostitution was neither dangerous nor a life sentence. In Shaketown, Opal's dream of saving up and moving to Seattle came true for many-- it wasn't unusual for women who went into "the trade" to conserve the money they earned and find legitimate work and a new life under a new name.