A Visit to San Francisco 1906 with The Phoenix Crown by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang

Review of Kate Quinn's and Janie Chang's The Phoenix Crown by Theresa Gauthier

I happened upon Kate Quinn’s and Janie Chang’s novel, The Phoenix Crown, by chance. The title, the description lured me in and I had to read it. 

Any book with a strong female heroine is a find, and this one has four. These four disparate women who meet just by chance form a lasting connection through circumstance and trauma.

An opera singer from Nebraska, a botanist, an artist, and a Chinese seamstress are drawn together in the days before the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, and as if that’s not enough drama, a plot full of deception, murder, prejudice, sexism, racism, love, betrayal, AND a devastating earthquake make for a jam-packed narrative.

Gemma Garland, an opera singer, goes to San Francisco to recover from a personal crisis that, at first, the reader knows nothing about. What’s in San Francisco? The only person left on earth that Gemma trusts, her long time friend Nelly Doyle. 

Nelly is a free spirit. A bohemian who had to end up in San Francisco in 1906 because where else would she go? An artist, Nelly doesn’t pay a lot of attention to public opinion, and goes through life following her heart. She and Gemma once shared an apartment in New York and have remained friends ever since. In need of comforting and a shoulder to cry on, and having landed a job in a traveling opera company she’ll be meeting in San Francisco, she knows Nelly is the safe haven she needs. 

To her surprise and shock, Nelly isn’t there when she arrives. Taking her room in a boarding house, Gemma meets Alice, a botanist—older, more unconventional, than the Soprano—and Suling, an orpahaned Chinese seamstress trying to get our from under the thumb of her uncle who’s hell bent on marrying her off to a successful Chinese businessman.

I was engrossed in the story to the extent that I never would have stopped reading before I finished it. The story was solid, the characters were good, so why wasn’t this a five star read?

Guaranteed, it was for someone. Maybe it will be for you. Maybe it will be for me if I were to read it again.

All I can say is even though the story was good, the characters good, the historical look at San Francisco in 1906 and beyond was good, I felt the story missed the mark. I didn’t feel connected these characters and situations, though I did want to know how it turned out. It’s the difference between watching a 22 minute sitcom episode or a 10 hour mini-series—the first is fine and even entertaining, but the second draws you into the story in ways the first can’t.

It's a good book. A solid story, I can recommend it to any reader interested in strong women in historical settings. It's what I might call a vacation read or a beach read—enjoyable and worth reading.