1906
A Novel
by James Dalessandro

List Price: $13.95
Pages: 357
Format: Trade Paperback
ISBN: 0811849414
Publisher: Chronicle Books, LLC

Screenwriter and novelist Dalessandro (Bohemian Heart) pens an imaginative and dense interplay between fact and fiction in this story of corruption, crime lords and the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Annalisa Passarelli, the Evening Bulletin's music critic, narrates the tale with a mix of first-person intimacy and cool omniscience. She's secretly helping the chief of detectives, Byron Fallon, gather dirt on a corrupt political syndicate headed by Adam Rolf, city attorney and power broker. Rolf (a fictional character) owns the "puppet-mayor,"? Eugene Schmitz (an actual person), and is supported by an army of goons and waterfront toughs led by the infamous Shanghai Kelly, who, as Dalessandro notes in his afterword, was actually dead by 1906. Byron aims to arrest the mayor, the police chief and the city attorney in one fell swoop, but when he is killed investigating a murder at the waterfront, it's up to his son Hunter, a Stanford graduate and fledgling police detective, to carry his mantle. Annalisa and Hunter appeal to an association of honest cops known as the Brotherhood (co-led by Hunter's brother, Christian), who are dedicated to destroying Rolf's machine, although Hunter also has personal vengeance on his mind. They secure incriminating evidence, but before justice can be served, the earthquake strikes, plunging the city into chaos. This plot-and all its subplots, one starring a beautiful Kansas runaway, another featuring tenor Enrico Caruso-might have worked beautifully, but Dalessandro employs too many B-movie theatrics, and the love story falls flat. Still, there's plenty of suspense to keep readers turning pages to the bittersweet conclusion. — Publisher's Weekly

top of the page

1. How did you feel about Annalisa Passarelli as the narrator of 1906? Women at the turn of the century were in a great period of transformation. Did you identify with her, feel that she represented that spirit?

2. Were you shocked to learn about the rampant corruption in San Francisco? About the treatment of Chinese girls and the Shanghaiing of unwilling sailors? What surprised you the most?

3. How did you feel about the history of San Francisco and the disaster? Were you surprised to read the methods employed by the politicians and the army to try to stop the fire? About the shooting of suspected looters?

4. Fans of the book have debated their favorite characters. Was there any that particularly resonated with you?

5. Historical novels often blend fiction and real life characters: at the end of the novel, Mr. Dalessandro explains who was who. Did you find the interaction --- and the guide to this --- a satisfactory effort?

6. The "Cain and Abel" elements of the Christian Fallon - Hunter Fallon relationship is a classic device for fiction writers, two brothers who are both at war and in harmony with each other. Did this remind you of any other pair of brothers and keep you engaged?

7. There is an old adage that "good bad guys" can make or break a good tale, as did Hannibal Lecter in "Silence of the Lambs." Mr. Dalessandro employed a wide array of inter-connected villains: Boss Abe Ruef, Mayor Eugene Schmitz, General Frederick Funston, Shanghai Kelly. How did they figure into the story, and did they represent the San Francisco that the author tried to convey?

8. Sometimes smaller, secondary characters can steal the story as well. What did Enrico Caruso represent to 1906? And what of Kaitlin Staley, the runaway Kansas farm girl, and her father, Sheriff Lincoln Staley. A legendary San Francisco character, Emperor Norton, was used as "Emperor Milton", and has but one real appearance, when he rescues Kaitlin: did you feel this spoke to San Francisco's love of zany characters?

9. The author wrote a "disaster novel" differently from others: he spent half the book building up the city of San Francisco and its broad cast of characters. Did you find that engaging, and did he accomplish his (or Annalisa Passarelli's) mandate to let you know what was, so that you could better gauge what was lost?

10. The author employed a unique device: having Annalisa as the narrator, relating her own personal experiences, then painting portraits of the activities of others, which she says in the prologue she created from things that were told to her, from letters from both the living and dead, stating that no one point of view could tell "this great tale." She also states it was a device she learned from her heroine, the pioneering journalist Nellie Bly. Did this work for you and hold your attention

11. One of the challenges of historical novels -- and the joy when it works -- is to be transported to another time and place, to hear and see and feel it like we were there. If 1906 did that for you, was there anything in particular that you found most effective?

12. Historic novels often try to tell us something big, offer us a theme, something that we may be losing in modern life. Was there anything that resonates with you.

13. Was there anything that you read that reminds you of current life, of lessons we have not learned, that make you wonder if we are really changing or growing as a society, or in fact slipping backward?

top of the page

"Interwoven storylines—civic corruption, sex, high-profile murder, Enrico Caruso—lead up to, then involve the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. Frustrated young newspaper reporter Annalisa Passarelli, who narrates, wants to cover politics but is consigned to cultural events like the upcoming performances of world-renowned tenor Enrico Caruso and rising dramatic actor John Barrymore. Nonetheless, Annalisa tracks the escalating war between the crimelords working the Barbary Coast (Shanghai Kelly, The Whale, and Scarface being three of the most notorious) and the overworked police force headed by righteous Lieutenant Byron Fallon. Byron's elder son Christian has followed in his father's footsteps, but younger son Hunter is attending Stanford. When a policeman is murdered while investigating a waterfront shanghaiing operation, Byron personally checks it out-and meets the same fate. Hunter and Christian, helped by Annalisa, follow a trail of graft and depravity that leads all the way up to the office of city attorney Adam Rolf, a highly respected citizen. Meanwhile, geologists tracking recent trends warn of the disaster to come, but the civic crooks put personal gain well above public safety. The lynchpin in a cabal that includes railroad magnates, crooked cops, and avaricious politicians, attorney Rolf regularly hires courtesans of the famous Madame Tessie Wall. Indeed, Kansas teenager Kaitlin Staley, dreaming of fame and fortune, runs away from her domineering father and straight into the arms of the predatory Wall and Rolf. Both Barrymore and Caruso are onstage the night before the early morning quake (Caruso's pre-performance rituals are outlined in amusing detail), and Dalessandro tracks a dozen other denizens of Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, Bush Street and elsewhere in the hours before the tremor. An action-packed final third dramatizes the quake and subsequent fire, and their impact on the sprawling cast of characters. Prelude to the disaster feels a bit like woolgathering, but Dalessandro (Bohemian Heart, 1993, etc.) pays off with an exciting and vivid depiction of history."

—Kirkus Reviews

"James Dalessandro's 1906 is a bold, sweeping novel inspired by one of the biggest epic disasters in American history, the great San Francisco earthquake and fire. It's a richly textured, engrossing, and extraordinary tale."

—Vincent Bugliosi, author of Helter Skelter

This gallop through earthquake-era San Francisco is loaded with admirable historical detail and reveals the raptor civic corruption as murderous as the San Andreas fault.

—Oakley Hall, author of Ambrose Bierce and The Queen of Spades