As every native San Franciscan can tell you, Emperor Norton was one of a long line of unforgettable characters who have helped give San Francisco its distinctive reputation. He proclaimed himself “Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico” in 1859, ruling his vast domain from the streets of San Francisco for two decades. In her own time, shortly before the Emperor had passed from the scene, a homeless woman, Jenny Bonnet, joined him in the pantheon of the city’s greatest creations. Bonnet was a favorite subject of sensational news coverage. She wore men’s clothing. Collected live frogs for sale in sacks to restaurants. Rode (someone else’s) high-wheeled bicycle all over town. And got herself into all manner of scrapes. Emma Donoghue brings Emperor Norton’s San Francisco and the incomparable Bonnet back to life in Frog Music, her fact-based novel set in 1876 in the City by the Bay.
A murder mystery propels the action
Bonnet’s story, as related in Frog Music, is a murder mystery. Blanche Beunon, a French immigrant like Bonnet, tells the tale. She’s a dancehall-girl celebrated for her bawdy performances and a highly sought-after prostitute. The two women meet one day as Beunon is crossing the street and Bonnet runs into her with her high-wheeler. Their lives quickly become entangled with each other in the weeks that follow the collision. The eccentric Bonnet shows up without warning from time to time to pester Beunon with perplexing and inconvenient questions that eventually upend her life.
Frog Music by Emma Donoghue (2014) 405 pages ★★★★☆
Characters modeled on real people
The cast of characters, nearly all of them real people, includes Beunon’s “macs.” He’s a good-for-nothing “fancy man” who lives on her earnings. There’s also a younger man who fawns on him—and others in the French immigrant community in polyglot San Francisco. In the background are several other memorable characters. A notorious Prussian madam. A police detective. The cruel “doctress” who runs a dormitory for unwanted children. And an albino reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. Except for the reporter, these are all historical figures.
San Francisco itself is the greatest of the unforgettable characters
But the greatest character of all is the city of San Francisco itself. It’s here in all its chaotic energy less than three decades after the Gold Rush. As Bonnet and Beunon make their way across town and back, the local color of the famously free-wheeling town leaps from the page. The story is set during a (true-to-life) smallpox epidemic and a simultaneous heat wave so uncharacteristic of that foggy seaside city. (As Mark Twain allegedly, but never, said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”) The extreme temperatures, and the fear set off by the epidemic, force tempers to a boil, triggering a racist anti-Chinese riot as well as many violent private tragedies—and the murder that is the centerpiece of this fascinating story.
Frog Music tells a lively tale of suspense. It’s peopled with unforgettable characters, all the more vivid for having actually lived. Emma Donoghue does San Francisco proud.
About the author
Emma Donoghue is the author of 16 novels and numerous short stories. Her work has won her a great many literary awards. She was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1969 and studied in Ireland and England. Donohughue earned a BA in English from University College Dublin and a PhD from Girton College, Cambridge. She married a Canadian fellow student and moved with her to Canada in 1998. There, her wife is a professor of French and Women’s Studies at the University of Western Ontario. They live in London, Ontario, with their two children.
For related reading
For a brilliant account of San Francisco’s latter-day wackiness, see Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love by David Talbot — From the Summer of Love to the Jonestown massacre.
If you enjoy reading historical fictional, check out the 10 best historical novels set in America and 20 most enlightening historical novels. And if you’re looking for exciting historical novels, see Top 10 historical mysteries and thrillers.
You might also enjoy Top 10 great popular novels.
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