Phyllis Whitney

We're thinking of taking a trip to San Francisco, so I thought I would do a little background reading. This was an opportunity to revisit one of my childhood obsessions -- disasters (natural and otherwise). Between the ages of 11 and 13, if I wasn't reading about the Johnstown Flood or the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, I was learning about the San Francisco earthquake.

First I picked up Simon Winchester's A Crack in the Edge of the World. It's got one of the greatest covers I've ever seen on a book -- it folds out into a poster, all done in the graphic style of more or less 1906, yet manages to integrate the title into a meaningful cover at the same time (each of those black jagged lines conceals a fold). The book did not really live up to the cover, unfortunately, although it had its bright spots. I particularly like his discussion of the importance of the year 1906 before the earthquake. It was, he writes, a year demarcating the 19th century (and tradition) from the 2oth (and modernism). When he finally gets to the earthquake, he does a good job of relaying many facts and firsthand accounts.

When I finished it, I allowed myself the guilty pleasure of the book I had really wanted to read in the first place: Phyllis Whitney's The Fire and the Gold. Published in 1956, in part to honor the 50th anniversary of the earthquake, this juvenile romance was a favorite of mine when I was a young teenager. I think it was in my middle school library.

It tells the story of 19-year-old Melora Cranby and her family, recovering from the earthquake and fire. What amazed me in this rereading was how accurate and detailed Whitney's account is -- she relayed many of the same facts that Winchester had included in his book. Upon finishing the The Fire and the Gold, I found on the "About the Author" page that Whitney grew up in Berkeley, and returned to the area to do research for the book: she "studied firsthand accounts, looked at hundreds of pictures, and talked with people who remembered the quake and the fire. Day after day she walked the streets, following the course the story action would take."

As far as I know, Whitney only wrote two other juvenile historical romances. Step to the Music takes place on Staten Island during the Civil War. I remember it as a very moving and enlightening view of the civil war, with characters drawn from both sides. It deals with the aftermath of the war for amputees, families torn apart, and the effects of the New York draft riots on the black population. Whitney spent much of her adult life living on Staten Island, so I would assume that her geography and island history would both be as strong as that in her San Francisco book.

The remaining novel, Creole Holiday, is a bit more light weight in subject matter than the other two, but the setting is just as interesting: New Orleans in the Gay '90s. The main character (again, a young woman) is drawn to a life in the theater, much to her family's disapproval. I don't recall this book as well as the other two, but I'm sure it's an enjoyable read.

I wrote Phyllis Whitney a letter when I was about 12 years old, suggesting a story plot to her. She wrote back (I still have the letter somewhere), and explained that it didn't work that way for her but that perhaps I could write it myself.

I remember I was crushed at the time. But now, of course, I know that I should have taken her advice.