“Sisters, mothers, heroines, charlatans, criminals, buffoons, scam artists, prostitutes, and the uncontrollable, passionate brawn of a young nation: in Vera we see, taste, smell the marrow of a country intoxicated on hope—all evidence to the contrary. Amazingly, Edgarian has captured a rolling, earnest, perpetual ruin so complex it could just be called life. She’s conjured another wonderful novel out of dust, history, love.”

“Brilliantly conceived and beautifully realized.”

“Richly plotted historical fiction, brilliantly conceived and superbly realized.”

“Vera shines. [Edgarian] does a masterful job of placing the reader in an authentic landscape, a time and era of a young West Coast city coming into its own. Indeed, San Francisco is one of Edgarian’s best-drawn characters, ‘a tremblor-riven paradise, this city of prostitutes and thieves and dreamers and me,’ says Vera. Vera is a timely story for disaster-prone days, showing us that healing, hope and fortitude make up the true ground beneath us.”

“A novel of resilience in the face of disaster, just what we need right about now. Carol Edgarian’s tale couldn’t have come at a better time.”

“In addition to being an all-encompassing and enthralling historical novel, Vera parallels with the current era, and all of its accompanying losses.”

“Though panoramic in sweep, Carol Edgarian’s VERA is a novel of great immediacy and heart. From the early scene at the opera, to its shocking real-world correlative, this novel exists in the zone – let’s call it the world. In so many ways, it sings.”

“The City by the Bay, leveled by the 1906 earthquake and fire, is vividly evoked in Edgarian’s engrossing saga, which features Vera, the teenage daughter of the madam of a notorious bordello frequented by corrupt politicians. Abandoned after the quake and left with nothing, Vera picks up her younger sister, makes an alliance with a former rival, and improvises a family to forge a path in this shaky new world. Edgarian enriches her novel by weaving in real figures, like tenor Enrico Caruso, as an ingenious Vera navigates a world sharply divided by affluence and poverty that exposes discrimination and injustice, requiring a special resilience to survive.”

“Vera doesn’t quite fit the usual parameters for a heroine of historical fiction, but perhaps that’s why she makes such an arresting narrator. Readers looking for one of those, plus a new perspective on the Great Quake, will find them in this novel.”

“Reading about the sudden destruction of a world right in the middle of our own twenty-first-century crisis helped me understand that the question we’re asking now is one we’ve asked before: Where do we go from here? Carol Edgarian’s Vera brings to vivid life a historical moment that defined a city, an era. It’s an extraordinary glimpse into the American DNA.”

“Vera is a triumph—a story of disaster and healing, power and humility, grit and grace set against the lush, lascivious backdrop of San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake. This book is as whipsmart as its heroine and as electric as her city and will haunt me—in the best way—for a long time to come.”

“Set in San Francisco during the great quake and fire of 1906, this wonderfully compelling novel takes us deeply into the heart and mind of an unforgettable fifteen year old girl, one who must find her way alone through a mother’s neglect, through bordellos and corrupt politicians, through the debris and ashes of what was once “The Paris of the West.” Vera is that rare novel that you’ll want to buy for loved ones just as soon as you reach its shimmeringly beautiful ending. And its street-wise, resilient protagonist will stay with you for a very long time indeed.”

“In this story, Edgarian combines lyrical writing and a cast of unforgettable characters, both real and imagined, with themes of love, rejection, graft, and economic disparity, all sprinkled with racism and misogyny. You won’t be able to visit the City by the Bay ever again without looking for Rose and her descendants. I couldn’t put this down.”

“Written with distinctive and elegant prose, Edgarian paints a beautiful portrait of devastation…a character-driven novel about family, power and loyalty, ‘Vera’ ultimately asks if it’s possible to belong to another person.”

“The author paints a vivid portrait of a metropolis teeming with sex workers, immigrants, corrupt politicians, and artists. . . . The result makes for a stirring testament to a resilient city that never knew the meaning of the word quit.”

“Vera, the 15-year-old daughter of the owner of San Francisco’s most legendary brothel, has always had to be scrappy and resourceful, even as a child. But the great earthquake of 1906 shakes even Vera, who now finds herself an orphan and guardian to her little sister, Pie. Teaming up with a former enemy, Vera is forced to imagine a new world for herself among an unlikely band of survivors.”

“Carol Edgarian weaves a wonderful tale of struggle, youth, perseverance, love and the lack of it, and much of what makes us human beings. Vera flows from chapter to chapter as it captures a difficult but evocative time in the life of one of America’s great cities. It is well worth a read for this alone, if not for the gripping story of a young girl’s struggle and coming to age during the life shattering events of the earthquake and fires of 1906.”

“Edgarian’s gritty yet hopeful historical novel doesn’t gloss over the countless tragedies rising like the smoke and dust in the 500 devastated city blocks, but Vera personifies the pluck that revived San Francisco. . . . riveting.”

“A lovely, constantly surprising novel. . . . this tart-tongued female Huck Finn leads a ragtag gang. . . . serious research underlies Edgarian’s novel. . . . a brand-new California classic.”

“If there’s a book that speaks urgently to a time of grief, resilience, wounding loneliness, and collective hope in one of the deadliest pandemics in history, it is Vera — a work to be cherished for what it uncovers in the pages and, possibly, the heart of the reader, one that brings a traveler to ‘the other side by a surprise or a marvel or a song.’”

“In Carol Edgarian’s Vera, the 15-year-old illegitimate daughter of San Francisco’s most powerful madam survives one of the greatest tragedies the West Coast has ever known: the 1906 earthquake. Vera is a coming-of-age story, in which the tragedies that afflict one’s early years go on to sketch the outlines of who we will become; it’s up to us to fill in the space left between, with whatever colors we see fit. But it’s also a portrait of a city that survived being nearly demolished, first by earthquake, then by fire, then by people with no business wielding power in a city they didn’t appreciate or understand or love. San Francisco pre-quake was wild and beautiful and strange. Its new form would be in some ways worse, and in many ways better. Most importantly, it survived.”

“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. . . . The novel shines in painting a vivid picture of early-20th-century San Francisco, including its rowdy politics.”

“Engaging. . . . memorable. . . . Vera is feisty and chafes at the confines of life in this era; her refusal to conform brings to mind a more street-savvy Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. She is forced to be stronger than any 15-year-old should have to be.”

“Vera Johnson has grown up between two worlds: The corrupt glamour of her bordello-owner mother and the squalor and danger of the family paid to raise Vera in her stead. But after the great earthquake of 1906 levels San Francisco, Vera has to assemble some unlikely allies to build a new kind of life from the rubble.”

“In Vera, the past is as alive as you are, the brilliantly illuminated characters loving and surviving, breaking and building, destroying and redeeming, in rich detail and true color.”

“Edgarian considers the earthquake an inflection point, a moment when social status and security were up for grabs. Her work contends elegantly and meticulously with historical detail, placing us at the center of a fateful event and allowing us to imagine how we’d respond… This is a novel about collective as much as individual rebirth… Vera fancies herself a phoenix emerging from the ashes, a double for the city.”

“Immersive. . . . Vera is a reverent ode to the resiliency of San Francisco and her people.”

“As a wayward San Franciscan, this might be the book I am most excited for.”

“As buildings capsize and fires rage, fifteen-year-old Vera relies on her cunning and street smarts to survive... Readers will find this story atmospheric and immersive. You’ll be rooting for young Vera to make it out alive and find a home once more.”

“A beautifully imagined coming-of-age drama. . . . Vera comes of age explosively, brilliantly and unforgettably. Inventive and poignant, Vera is full of heart-stopping descriptions of catastrophe and tragedy, but equally gorgeous and moving scenes of renewal and reinvention.”