We look forward to seeing you on your next visit to the library. Find a location near you.

Vera: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

Book Cover
Average Rating
5 star
 
(1)
4 star
 
(1)
3 star
 
(1)
2 star
 
(0)
1 star
 
(0)
Published:
Scribner 2021
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description
New York Times bestselling author Carol Edgarian delivers "an all-encompassing and enthralling" (Oprah Daily) novel featuring an unforgettable heroine coming of age in the aftermath of catastrophe, and her quest for love and reinvention.
Meet Vera Johnson, fifteen-year-old illegitimate daughter of Rose, notorious proprietor of San Francisco's most legendary bordello. Vera has grown up straddling two worlds—the madam's alluring sphere, replete with tickets to the opera, surly henchmen, and scant morality, and the quiet domestic life of the family paid to raise her.

On the morning of the great quake, Vera's worlds collide. As the city burns and looters vie with the injured, orphaned, and starving, Vera and her guileless sister, Pie, are cast adrift. Disregarding societal norms and prejudices, Vera begins to imagine a new kind of life. She collaborates with Tan, her former rival, and forges an unlikely family of survivors, navigating through the disaster together.

"A character-driven novel about family, power, and loyalty, (San Francisco Chronicle), Vera brings to life legendary characters—tenor Enrico Caruso, indicted mayor Eugene Schmitz and boss Abe Ruef, tabloid celebrity Alma Spreckels. This "brilliantly conceived and beautifully realized" (Booklist, starred review) tale of improbable outcomes and alliances takes hold from the first page, with remarkable scenes of devastation, renewal, and joy. Vera celebrates the audacious fortitude of its young heroine, who discovers an unexpected strength in unprecedented times.
Also in This Series
Formats
Adobe EPUB eBook
Works on all eReaders (except Kindles), desktop computers and mobile devices with reading apps installed.
Kindle Book
Works on Kindles and devices with a Kindle app installed.
OverDrive Read
Need Help?
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
More Like This
Other Editions and Formats
More Copies In LINK+
Loading LINK+ Copies...
More Details
Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
03/02/2021
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781501157547
ASIN:
B08BZVR8VJ
Reviews from GoodReads
Loading GoodReads Reviews.
Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Carol Edgarian. (2021). Vera: A Novel. Scribner.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Carol Edgarian. 2021. Vera: A Novel. Scribner.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Carol Edgarian, Vera: A Novel. Scribner, 2021.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Carol Edgarian. Vera: A Novel. Scribner, 2021.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
Copy Details
LibraryOwnedAvailable
Shared Digital Collection11

There is 1 hold on this title.

Staff View
Grouped Work ID:
a21102ed-a2f0-5de2-ecdc-3ad9759736ae
Go To Grouped Work
Needs Update?:
No
Date Added:
Feb 26, 2021 13:09:12
Date Updated:
Feb 26, 2021 13:09:12
Last Metadata Check:
Mar 27, 2024 11:17:50
Last Metadata Change:
Feb 21, 2024 06:22:50
Last Availability Check:
Mar 27, 2024 11:17:52
Last Availability Change:
Mar 27, 2024 11:17:52
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Mar 28, 2024 02:11:39

OverDrive Product Record

images
    • cover:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0439-1/{6BC3EAA0-6278-4C08-8BA4-C1F1F7858B72}Img100.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • thumbnail:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0439-1/{6BC3EAA0-6278-4C08-8BA4-C1F1F7858B72}Img200.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover150Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0439-1/6BC/3EA/A0/{6BC3EAA0-6278-4C08-8BA4-C1F1F7858B72}Img150.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover300Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0439-1/6BC/3EA/A0/{6BC3EAA0-6278-4C08-8BA4-C1F1F7858B72}Img400.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
formats
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781501157547
      • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
      • id: ebook-epub-adobe
      • identifiers:
            • type: ASIN
            • value: B08BZVR8VJ
      • name: Kindle Book
      • id: ebook-kindle
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781501157547
      • name: OverDrive Read
      • id: ebook-overdrive
mediaType
eBook
primaryCreator
    • role: Author
    • name: Carol Edgarian
title
Vera
dateAdded
2021-02-26T14:08:00-05:00
contentDetails
      • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=5588887
      • type: text/html
      • account:
          • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
          • id: 1151
sortTitle
Vera A Novel
crossRefId
5588887
subtitle
A Novel
id
6bc3eaa0-6278-4c08-8ba4-c1f1f7858b72
starRating
0

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain
False
formats
      • fileName: Vera_9781501157547_5588887
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 3054391
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781501157547
      • rights:
            • type: Copying
            • value: 0
            • type: Printing
            • value: 0
            • type: Lending
            • value: 0
            • type: ReadAloud
            • value: 0
            • type: ExpirationRights
            • value: 0
      • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-epub-adobe
      • onSaleDate: 3/2/2021
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=6bc3eaa0-6278-4c08-8ba4-c1f1f7858b72&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
      • fileName: Vera_9781501157547_5588887
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 0
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781501157547
            • type: ASIN
            • value: B08BZVR8VJ
      • name: Kindle Book
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-kindle
      • onSaleDate: 3/2/2021
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=6bc3eaa0-6278-4c08-8ba4-c1f1f7858b72&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
      • fileName: Vera_9781501157547_5588887
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 0
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9781501157547
      • name: OverDrive Read
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-overdrive
      • onSaleDate: 3/2/2021
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=6bc3eaa0-6278-4c08-8ba4-c1f1f7858b72&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
keywords
      • value: Natural disasters
      • value: resilience
      • value: crime
      • value: family secrets
      • value: earthquakes
      • value: Historical Fiction
      • value: Women's Fiction
      • value: gender roles
      • value: brothels
      • value: Mothers and daughters
      • value: corrupt politicians
      • value: best historical fiction
      • value: 1906 earthquake
      • value: set in california
      • value: novels set in San Francisco
      • value: women's roles
      • value: best novels
      • value: top books
      • value: top novels
      • value: California books
      • value: women's historical fiction
      • value: best fiction
      • value: bestselling historical fiction
      • value: top fiction
      • value: family history books
      • value: books with memorable heroines
      • value: off the shelf
      • value: books about san francisco
      • value: novels set in 1910s
      • value: narrative magazine
      • value: generational womanhood
creators
      • role: Author
      • fileAs: Edgarian, Carol
      • bioText: New York Times bestselling author Carol Edgarian's novels include Vera, Three Stages of Amazement, and Rise the Euphrates. Her essays and articles regularly appear in national magazines and anthologies, and she is editor of The Writer's Life: Intimate Thoughts on Work, Love, Inspiration, and Fame. She is cofounder and editor of Narrative, a leading digital publisher of fiction, poetry, essays and art, and Narrative in the Schools, which provides free reading and writing resources to students and teachers in nineteen countries. She lives in San Francisco with her family.
      • name: Carol Edgarian
publishDate
2021-03-02T00:00:00-05:00
isOwnedByCollections
True
title
Vera
fullDescription
New York Times bestselling author Carol Edgarian delivers "an all-encompassing and enthralling" (Oprah Daily) novel featuring an unforgettable heroine coming of age in the aftermath of catastrophe, and her quest for love and reinvention.
Meet Vera Johnson, fifteen-year-old illegitimate daughter of Rose, notorious proprietor of San Francisco's most legendary bordello. Vera has grown up straddling two worlds—the madam's alluring sphere, replete with tickets to the opera, surly henchmen, and scant morality, and the quiet domestic life of the family paid to raise her.

On the morning of the great quake, Vera's worlds collide. As the city burns and looters vie with the injured, orphaned, and starving, Vera and her guileless sister, Pie, are cast adrift. Disregarding societal norms and prejudices, Vera begins to imagine a new kind of life. She collaborates with Tan, her former rival, and forges an unlikely family of survivors, navigating through the disaster together.

"A character-driven novel about family, power, and loyalty, (San Francisco Chronicle), Vera brings to life legendary characters—tenor Enrico Caruso, indicted mayor Eugene Schmitz and boss Abe Ruef, tabloid celebrity Alma Spreckels. This "brilliantly conceived and beautifully realized" (Booklist, starred review) tale of improbable outcomes and alliances takes hold from the first page, with remarkable scenes of devastation, renewal, and joy. Vera celebrates the audacious fortitude of its young heroine, who discovers an unexpected strength in unprecedented times.
reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        November 1, 2020
        The place: San Francisco. The year: 1906. Though raised by a foster mother, 15-year-old Vera is, in fact, the illegitimate daughter of Rose, the most successful madam on the Barbary Coast. Vera's life is upended on April 18 when the great earthquake strikes San Francisco, followed by disastrous fires. With her foster mother dead and Rose missing, Vera and her foster sister, Piper, move into Rose's house, adjacent to tony Lafayette Square. Strong-willed, sharp-tongued Vera doesn't rest until she finds the gravely injured Rose in an emergency hospital tent and then brings her home with the help of Bobby, a seemingly homeless boy she has met. Against all odds, Vera, with the help of a neighboring doctor, nurses the imperious Rose back to health. Desperate for her mother's love, Vera is devastated when Rose clearly prefers a second illegitimate daughter, Lifang, whose father is ill-tempered Tan, Rose's butler. Bobby then moves into the stable behind Rose's house, and he and Vera fall in love. But can their relationship, born of disaster, last? 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.

        COPYRIGHT(2020) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        January 4, 2021
        Edgarian (Three Stages of Amazement) follows a teenage girl who comes of age in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake in this visceral novel. Vera, 15, is the illegitimate daughter of Rose, a brothel madam who made a name for herself as a “much-favored prostitute” among gold miners. Raised by a foster mother, Vera longs to be independent like Rose, while her foster sister, Pie wants only to marry a local shopkeeper. Their plans change when an earthquake devastates the city. Vera and Pie seek shelter at Rose’s house, which is still standing but Rose is gone. The two girls form an odd community of sorts with Tan, Rose’s Chinese butler; Tan’s family; several of Rose’s girls; and a psychiatrist neighbor. While Tan sets up a makeshift outdoor kitchen to feed the city’s dispossessed, Vera scours San Francisco for her mother. Slowly, the city begins to rebuild itself around them. 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. Agent: Dorian Karchmar, WME.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        January 1, 2021
        The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 extinguishes all sense of normalcy for 15-year-old Vera Johnson, who must survive by sheer pluck and intelligence in the newly rattled landscape. Olive-skinned, dark-haired Vera looks nothing like her blond sister, Pie. After all, Vera is the illegitimate daughter of San Francisco's most successful madam, Rose, who made an arrangement with Morie Johnson, Pie's Swedish mother, to raise Vera as her own in exchange for the physical comforts money can buy. Morie favors her biological daughter while not sparing the rod on Vera. Then Morie dies in the earthquake, leaving Vera to fend for herself and her sister. Having been an occasional visitor to Rose's Pacific Heights mansion, Vera knows she will be able to find succor there. With Rose missing, though, Vera resorts to her internal drive to slowly craft a new life for herself, Pie, and a whole cast of colorful characters. 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.

        COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

popularity
803
links
    • self:
        • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/6bc3eaa0-6278-4c08-8ba4-c1f1f7858b72/metadata
        • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
id
6bc3eaa0-6278-4c08-8ba4-c1f1f7858b72
starRating
3.8
images
    • cover:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/0439-1/{6BC3EAA0-6278-4C08-8BA4-C1F1F7858B72}Img100.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • thumbnail:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/0439-1/{6BC3EAA0-6278-4C08-8BA4-C1F1F7858B72}Img200.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover150Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/0439-1/6BC/3EA/A0/{6BC3EAA0-6278-4C08-8BA4-C1F1F7858B72}Img150.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover300Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/0439-1/6BC/3EA/A0/{6BC3EAA0-6278-4C08-8BA4-C1F1F7858B72}Img400.jpg
        • type: image/jpeg
isPublicPerformanceAllowed
False
languages
      • code: en
      • name: English
subjects
      • value: Fiction
      • value: Literature
      • value: Historical Fiction
publishDateText
03/02/2021
otherFormatIdentifiers
      • type: ISBN
      • value: 9781501157530
mediaType
eBook
shortDescription
New York Times bestselling author Carol Edgarian delivers "an all-encompassing and enthralling" (Oprah Daily) novel featuring an unforgettable heroine coming of age in the aftermath of catastrophe, and her quest for love and reinvention.
Meet Vera Johnson, fifteen-year-old illegitimate daughter of Rose, notorious proprietor of San Francisco's most legendary bordello. Vera has grown up straddling two worlds—the madam's alluring sphere, replete with tickets to the opera, surly henchmen, and scant morality, and the quiet domestic life of the family paid to raise her.

On the morning of the great quake, Vera's worlds collide. As the city burns and looters vie with the injured, orphaned, and starving, Vera and her guileless sister, Pie, are cast adrift. Disregarding societal norms and prejudices, Vera begins to imagine a new kind of life. She collaborates with Tan, her former rival, and forges an unlikely family of survivors, navigating through the...
sortTitle
Vera A Novel
crossRefId
5588887
subtitle
A Novel
publisher
Scribner
bisacCodes
      • code: FIC014000
      • description: FICTION / Historical / General
      • code: FIC019000
      • description: Fiction / Literary
      • code: FIC043000
      • description: Fiction / Coming of Age