Publisher's Synopsis
Four women, forced by difficult circumstances to flee their homes in search of safety and a better life in a time (late 1800's/early 1900's) when women had very few choices and even less personal power or freedom.
When Caitlyn's father sells her at age 16 to pay off his gambling debts and then beats her mother senseless, Caitlyn turns to her best friend Coltrane, the Black man who works for her family. But in 1898 North Carolina, when the neighbors' wife suspects Coltrane of harming Caitlyn's mother, they escape west on a wild and terrifying journey that will rip them apart and bring them closer together than they ever dared to imagine.
At the same time, Liah, posing as a man, heads east from China to escape her abusive husband. One Feather, the last surviving member of her Native American tribe wanders south, and Marianna stows away on a ship heading north from Colombia in search of the father of her unborn child.
For these four young women, San Francisco offers hope for a new life. It becomes the epicenter where they will find love, sometimes forbidden love, and forge an unexpected and unique bond of family and purpose in the midst of an epic disaster - the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
