A Race to Splendor

February 14, 2011
For her sixth novel (after A Light on the Veranda), Ware returns to historicals with an unlikely romance framed around San Francisco's devastating earthquake of 1906. New architect Amelia Bradshaw returns to the city to claim what's left of the Bay View, her grandfather's hotel next to Chinatown, only to find that her drunkard father has lost it to J.D. Thayer in a poker game. After an unsuccessful court battle—at a time when women had no right of possession—Bradshaw takes a job as junior architect under Julia Morgan, the first licensed female architect in California history. When Morgan's firm is selected to rebuild the Bay View, along with its competitor, the Fairmont, Bradshaw is put in charge of the former, forcing her to work closely with Mr. Thayer, her adversary, who is determined to beat the anniversary of the quake and the opening of the Fairmont. In time, Bradshaw and Thayer learn that they have more in common than they think, and Bradshaw grows close to some of the Chinese workers, giving Ware a chance to chronicle the despair faced by that community during the disaster. Ware's trailblazing woman is a feisty host for an affecting story of the struggle to rise above the wreckage of mankind.

February 15, 2011
Floors pitch violently, buildings collapse, San Francisco disintegrates and bosoms heave.

Were there women in the professions in 1906? Yes. Were they uncommon? Yes. Were any of them architects? Apparently. Were they full of bodice-ripping passion? Well, for that, you'll need to turn to this sometimes steamy, more often merely humid yarn. Amelia Hunter Bradshaw is a feminist pioneer, quite happy to shock the good citizens of California with her demands for suffrage and her perky proclamations: "It's a new century, Mr. Thayer, and we 'females,' as you put it, are quite capable of seeing to our own affairs." So it appears, though a brawny pair of arms and hungry set of lips have their place in the proceedings, too. Amelia knows her way around an I-beam, as we learn courtesy of Ware's constant exposition: "From what we've seen so far," Amelia's partner in the building trades asserts, "it looks as if we'll have to start in the basement and methodically work our way to the sky with reinforcing construction," to which our heroine replies: "At least the basement's already cleared of rubble and shorn up with support posts." Alas, the prose bumps along like a bowling ball descending a shaky staircase, as witness the opening sentence: "James Diaz Thayer scooped the deck of cards bearing his initials into a pile on top of the late Charlie Hunter's desk in the bowels of Nob Hill's celebrated Bay View Hotel." Anyone up for diagramming that one? Things don't get much better, though there are some competently imagined scenes of death and destruction, and even of smooching. The tale grinds along like a right-lateral strike-slip fault to a long-awaited end that, regrettably, does not include much elastic rebound. In her favor, Amelia is nicer than Howard Roark and a worse shot than Leon Czolgosz, but that's about the best that can be said for this book.

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March 1, 2011

Amelia Bradshaw's return to 1906 San Francisco after earning a degree in architecture should have been cause for celebration. But her family hotel has been gambled away to J.D. Thayer by her sot of a father, and the law in the form of corrupt judges does not support her. Worse, school friend and mentor Julia Morgan is unable to make good on her offer of a position for Amelia. In an instant, an earthquake reduces Amelia's problems, along with much of the city, to rubble, and the aftermath brings changes she could never have foreseen. Drawn into the frenzy to rebuild San Francisco, Amelia is also drawn to J.D.'s potent allure. VERDICT Vividly evocative of the time and place, Ware's (Island of the Swans) first novel in ten years deftly blends history and romance in a page-turning story. From her gripping descriptions of the earthquake and its aftermath to the interplay between the protagonists, this is another winner from an excellent wordsmith.--Pam O'Sullivan, Coll. at Brockport Lib., SUNY

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