This yearning Vera feels—the true pulse of the story—is the desire to be accepted by her mother. Edgarian brilliantly captures the broken mother-daughter dynamic and Vera’s 'booming, wanting heart' with the persistent backdrop of abandonment, longing, and displacement of 1906 San Francisco. The mother, however, is a shocking mystery ... There’s space for love to thrive: the wounded are nursed back to health, and broken relationships are mended. The pieces come together gracefully, as they should. But Rose is untouched. If she has any remorse, she doesn’t show it. She moves along as always — impervious, distant, and gone. Though it’s unsurprising, it does leave the reader questioning what a mother could possibly want or not want to so insistently choose a life without her daughter. Whatever she is chasing, does she ever find it, and if she does, is it worth all she leaves behind? ... As the people drive the plot, the place where it’s all happening is falling apart. People choose resilience in the devastation and get back up again and again. What is profound is how something as communal as one’s city can still feel utterly unhomely ... If there’s a book that speaks urgently to a time of grief, resilience, wounding loneliness, and collective hope in one of the deadliest pandemics in history, it is Vera—a work to be cherished for what it uncovers in the pages and, possibly, the heart of the reader, one that brings a traveler to 'the other side by a surprise or a marvel or a song.'
Vera takes readers on a necessarily brief tour of her prosperous, thriving West Coast city ... When we’re hearing about Vera’s experiences, the book races along, even more so when we’re meeting other catastrophe survivors ... While the history strikes an authentic note, some of the narrative rings hollow. We care about Vera and her companions, but a subplot about urban graft doesn’t add much to the story, even when Vera’s path crosses with those of real-life pols Abe Ruef and Mayor Eugene Schmitz. Too much happens too near the end in a novel whose spiky, proto-feminist heroine should have been given more space to absorb the one lesson her mother imparts ... Vera doesn’t quite fit the usual parameters for a heroine of historical fiction, but perhaps that’s why she makes such an arresting narrator. Readers looking for one of those, plus a new perspective on the Great Quake, will find them in this novel.
Told from Vera’s point of view later in life, we follow Vera and her sister Pie (Morie’s daughter) as they attempt to survive the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fires. Written with distinctive and elegant prose, Edgarian paints a beautiful portrait of devastation ... At times reminiscent of E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime , Vera is filled with characters based on historical figures like Eugene Schmitz, Abe Ruef, Alma Spreckels and Arnold Genthe, the photographer whose pictures of the earthquake’s devastation haunt viewers to this day. After recently reviewing another novel set around the 1906 earthquake, it was a unique reading experience to witness the same event through the eyes of a very different protagonist. A character-driven novel about family, power and loyalty, Vera ultimately asks if it’s possible to belong to another person.
Readers may come to Vera for a tale about the San Francisco earthquake, or for a juicy novel about the women who populate society’s underbelly. But the novel is actually about motherhood and Vera’s struggle to be cared for as she needs to be. Vera yearns for her mother’s love and respect, and she doesn’t care about how Rose’s disreputable place in society could impact her own life ... The many memorable characters populating Vera may provide interesting fodder for book club conversations. Vera is feisty and chafes at the confines of life in this era ... That said, the plot of Vera is overly complicated and features a bloated cast of characters. Rose’s employees and neighbors, as well as the city’s politicians, all have subplots to which Vera is only loosely connected. As a result, much of the novel feels like it’s scrambling to tie up loose ends rather than foregrounding the narrator’s own story. Vera is an engaging novel that could have been executed more succinctly.
Edgarian weaves a wonderful tale of struggle, youth, perseverance, love and the lack of it, and much of what makes us human beings. The story could be a medieval morality play, wherein the ultimate moral good is one’s survival, and that of those one holds dear. It is rich with real and created characters ... well written and flows from chapter to chapter as it captures a difficult but evocative time in the life of one of America’s great cities. It is well worth a read for this alone, if not for the gripping story of a young girl’s struggle and coming to age during the life shattering events of the earthquake and fires of 1906.
... lovely, constantly surprising ... Serious research underlies Edgarian’s novel. The geography is absolutely accurate, and some minor characters are historic figures ... The diction, particularly in dialogue, seems a little anachronistic at first: characters speak 21st-century English. But this becomes more understandable as the life story of truthful Vera reaches its satisfying conclusion. It also becomes clear that Vera itself is a brand-new California classic.
... beautifully imagined ... Writing in vivid, heartbreaking prose, Edgarian describes both the immediate destruction and the chaos that follows ... Vera comes of age explosively, brilliantly and unforgettably ... Edgarian’s use of first-person voice is jarring, at times even confusing, but always immediate and unflinching. This is without a doubt one of the most richly imagined works of historical fiction that I have ever read. Although the narrative is intensely character-driven, Edgarian takes no shortcuts when it comes to creating an immersive, nearly cinematic world ... Inventive and poignant, Vera is full of heart-stopping descriptions of catastrophe and tragedy, but equally gorgeous and moving scenes of renewal and reinvention.
Part survival story, part story of a young woman’s quest for love, this richly plotted historical novel is brilliantly conceived and beautifully realized. Edgarian brings the nearly destroyed San Francisco to vivid life, but it is Vera’s own troubled life that is the main attraction and what will live in the reader’s memory.
Edgarian considers the earthquake an inflection point, a moment when social status and security were up for grabs. Her work contends elegantly and meticulously with historical detail, placing us at the center of a fateful event and allowing us to imagine how we’d respond. Because so much about those April days has been documented, Edgarian’s challenge is to unfold the timeline with suspense, at the same time giving us access to a wide swath of San Francisco social life. She succeeds by creating a life for her main character that straddles boundaries and permits her to move freely between classes as she crisscrosses San Francisco’s broken streets.
... visceral ... Despite some anachronistic word choices, the author paints a vivid portrait of a metropolis teeming with sex workers, immigrants, corrupt politicians, and artists, and it’s fun to follow two strong young characters with very different views on life. The result makes for a stirring testament to a resilient city that never knew the meaning of the word quit.
Edgarian zooms the lens in on Vera, who narrates the book, and her immediate landscape, a choice that too often straightjackets the story. The novel shines in painting a vivid picture of early-20th-century San Francisco, including its rowdy politics, but it falls short of truly immersing the reader. Too often it reads like a daily chronicle of Vera’s doings, which gets claustrophobic. Rose’s mansion registers some damage but seems to escape the earthquake largely unscathed, a point that also strains credulity. Frustratingly, the plot takes a huge leap after the early post-earthquake days, barely skirting by Vera’s adulthood before we catch her again in old age. Even a memorable historical event can’t shake up a mostly bland story.
