Why Janie Chang and Kate Quinn teamed up to write a novel based on the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 | CBC Radio

When friends and writers Janie Chang and Kate Quinn decided to write a novel together, they wanted to explore their shared love of historical fiction and San Francisco’s culture. In their co-written new historical fiction work The Phoenix Crown, two women work to rebuild the vibrancy of the city that was lost after a famed earthquake. 

The Phoenix Crown is a novel that follows the intersecting paths of two women in the year 1906. Gemma is an opera singer struggling to become a star; meanwhile Suling is an embroideress in Chinatown escaping an arranged marriage. When they both meet Henry Thornton, a collector of Chinese antiques, his sponsorship may be the answer to both Gemma and Suling’s problems.

That is, until an earthquake hits San Francisco — leaving the two women to piece together the mystery of both Thornton’s disappearance and the legendary Phoenix Crown.

Janie Chang is a B.C.-based historical fiction writer who draws inspiration from her family history, ancestral tales and the stories she was told as a child about life in a Chinese small town pre-First World War. Her other novels include Three Souls, Dragon Springs Road and The Library of Legends.

Kate Quinn is an American writer. Her other novels include The Alice Network, The Huntress, The Rose Code and The Diamond Eye.

Chang and Quinn joined The Next Chapter‘s Ali Hassan to talk about co-writing The Phoenix Crown.

This amazing city of San Francisco was all but destroyed in a day after the earthquake and subsequent fire. Can you give us a sense of the city in 1906 before that earthquake and what drew you to write about it? 

Kate Quinn: It really was such a vibrant community, we’re looking at the jewel of the West Coast here. I mean, it was a place that had made its fortune. It had really became a boom town in the gold rush and at this point, the way most boom towns are, it wanted to get respectable.

So they had a huge mix of people who had been drawn there by the gold — and then by the railroads. 

It was just a spot that seemed like it was absolutely vivid and begging for a story.– Kate Quinn

You had people who had made their money and you had people who are looking to have fun. So you really had this place where there was energy, there was money, there was culture and it was just a spot that seemed like it was absolutely vivid and begging for a story. And that’s even before you get to the fact that almost so much of the city was leveled in such a devastating fashion, just over a matter of days. 

Janie, you were particularly drawn to tell the story of San Francisco’s Chinatown and we see it through the eyes of this character, Suling. What was that community like back then? 

Janie Chang: It was essentially a Chinese ghetto. This was during the years of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the U.S., so you had basically six huge blocks where 15,000 people were living and a great number of those were bachelor men since they were not allowed to bring their families or wives over.

It was a city that was being promoted by the white community as being filled with vice — including opium dens and brothels. But I wanted an opportunity to show that ordinary people live there: ordinary people were going about raising their families and taking their children for walks along the streets, ordinary people were just running businesses like grocery stores and laundries. 

Suling meets another young woman early in the story, Gemma, who I mentioned. She’s the young woman who has come to San Francisco to perform as an opera singer in a production of Carmen, which will feature one of the huge stars of the day, Caruso. What prompted you to make Gemma a singer? 

KQ: Really that was quite easy: before I became an author, I trained as an opera singer. I went to Boston University to study voice performance; I have a high and light soprano voice not unlike Gemma’s voice.

I did not end up obviously becoming a singer, I became a writer instead which is its own funny story. But I always decided that I would love to actually put my degree knowledge to use and be able to write about the world of opera, which I do find fascinating and it would be nice to have a heroine whose career I did not have to do intensive research into because this is a world I know very well. 

I always found it particularly interesting that the night before the great quake hits, San Francisco really had its great social event of the season which was anyone who was anyone was at the Grand Opera House seeing this performance of Carmen, which starred the MET traveling opera company from New York, and then literally the following morning after this fabulous, glittering night, that’s when the earthquake hit.

So just at the moment when the city was at its most triumphant and beautiful and had its social event of the season, it was destroyed so soon after. 

An interesting thing I read in the author notes was that the city rebuilt Chinatown after it was destroyed in such a way that the template for that rebuild was used in other places. Can you tell me a little bit about that rebuild?

JC: It was pretty amazing, it was a deliberate architectural decision. The city’s Chinatown’s fathers actually hired a Western architect and he came through with his vision of what Americans thought China looked like. So his buildings with those swooping, curling up eaves and the decorations on the roofs and the fancy balconies and it became very successful.

Prior to that, Chinatown was just a bunch of San Francisco apartments along the street and people had made their homes there and put shops on the ground floor and this new exotic architecture drew tourists. And not only did it draw tourists during the regular year, it was there to promote some sense that it might be interesting to experience Chinese culture. This was such a successful formula in trying to combat racism that many other Chinatowns took up that same idea. This is why a lot of people think that Chinatown looks like this because this is what China actually looks like and [it’s] not really.

This was such a successful formula in trying to combat racism that many other Chinatowns took up that same idea.– Janie Chang

Kate, let me ask you about these two heroines, Suling and Gemma. This is not a time where women could easily make their own way, financially or otherwise and they both these heroines really do want to. They want to look after themselves, they don’t want to rely on men or husbands. What are the forces that were working against them in doing that?

KQ: Any woman in that area is going to find a hard time trying to make her own way independently, without a family, without marriage. We really did want to show two women who want a career and or who want to have at least that foothold of independence so they do not have to rely on others. For Suling it’s difficult to do that because she has a community in Chinatown, but she does not have a family. She’s orphaned and she’s been recently abandoned by her lover who has left her high and dry. So she is trying very hard to think, “I’m going to escape the arranged marriage that is being made for me. I am going to get my own career going.” She’s a talented embroiderer and that’s about the only thing she has going for her. That’s the way she’s going to try to make her way and to try to get herself a little financial independence.

Really we wanted to have this be a story about women who are not just looking for love, looking for a husband, they’re looking for something a little bit extra.– Kate Quinn

For Gemma, she’s an artist, which is always a very chancy way to make a living. I mean, making a career on the stage is always hard. She’s also hamstrung by health issues — she suffers from debilitating migraines and if a migraine hits, she can’t necessarily perform. So really we wanted to have this be a story about women who are not just looking for love, looking for a husband, they’re looking for something a little bit extra. That’s why we decided to bring in another character who is sort of the temp, the model for both of them and a friend to both of them and that is the character of the botanist Alice Eastwood.

She was a real historical figure, she is a woman who is a little bit older than both, a woman who has achieved financial independence and a successful career all on her own merits and all on her own work. And so we have this woman as a little bit of a not only a friend and mentor to both of our heroines and not only a real life fascinating historical figure, but she’s also something someone that they can aspire to. It is difficult, but it is possible. 

You were friends when you started this collaboration. Does that friendship remain? Has this book broken anything into pieces?

KQ: It was our goal right from the beginning, before we even really knew what this book would be about, that we knew we wanted to have a book at the end that we were proud of and we knew we still wanted to be friends at the end of it. I’m very glad to say that we managed on both accounts.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.