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.

Refined Eroticism

In Shaketown, Cayley is faced with the difficult choice of crossing over into the deeply reviled world of prostitution or losing what little she's gained by being independent. From a paper published in The American Historical Review (Vol. 104, Feb. 1999, U. of Chicago Press) T.J.Gilfoyle states the obvious: "Prostitutes were 'ordinary' young females confronting limited possibilities and making rational and sometimes desperate choices." (pg 120). "Prostitutes formed a subterranean counter-society, an explicit moral, social, sanitary, and political threat. They symbolized disorder, excess, pleasure, and improvidence" (That's our Cayley!). "…changing patterns of urban consumption between 1896 and 1913 spurred the expansion of unregulated prostitution. In this period of material affluence and economic growth, bourgeois prostitution 'found its golden age.'". Bawdy houses--especially the high-end type run by Cayley and Opal satisfied aristocratic and bourgeois clientele "in search of refined eroticism."