416 pages
A cross-dressing vagabond named Jenny meets Blanche, a
French circus performer turned burlesque dancer, in 1876 San Francisco. Donahue weaves an interesting tale taken from
a real unsolved crime.
The Booklist summary:
“Donoghue flawlessly combines literary
eloquence and vigorous plotting in her first full-fledged mystery, a work as
original and multifaceted as its young murder victim. During the scorching
summer of 1876, Jenny Bonnet, an enigmatic cross-dressing bicyclist who traps
frogs for San Francisco’s restaurants, meets her death in a railroad saloon on
the city’s outskirts. Exotic dancer Blanche Beunon, a French immigrant living
in Chinatown, thinks she knows who shot her friend and why, but has no leverage
to prove it and doesn’t know if she herself was the intended target. A
compulsive pleasure-seeker estranged from her “fancy man,” Blanche searches
desperately for her missing son while pursuing justice for Jenny, but finds her
two goals sit in conflict. In language spiced with musical interludes and
raunchy French slang, Donoghue brings to teeming life the nasty, naughty side
of this ethnically diverse metropolis, with its brothels, gaming halls,
smallpox-infested boardinghouses, and rampant child abuse. Most of her seedy,
damaged characters really lived, and she not only posits a clever solution to a
historical crime that was never adequately solved but also crafts around
Blanche and Jenny an engrossing and suspenseful tale about moral growth,
unlikely friendship, and breaking free from the past.” --Sarah Johnson
No comments:
Post a Comment