THE PACIFIC OCEAN  |  1889 Philomena awoke with a start in an opulent stateroom below decks on the Pride of Jefferson. A single electric bulb shone brightly under a Bohemian glass shade throwing colored geometric shapes against wood paneling of Hungarian ash and French oak. As one of the first steamships to be equipped with … Continue reading 8:1 Sure Shot at Sea

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA  |  1889 Urias awoke in the damp and the dark. It was a good few minutes before he realized the pounding he was hearing was coming from inside his own skull. He reached inside his vest pocket for a match and his fingers closed on the business card. So my kind benefactor … Continue reading 7:2 Two Soldiers

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA  |  1889 “Excuse, me! Mr. Urias,” the desk clerk at the Union Hotel called after the tall figure dressed in gray sack coat and matching vest. The gentleman’s dark trousers were splattered with bay mud at the cuffs from walking the docks and the streets north of Montgomery where the burgeoning city … Continue reading 7:1 A Proposal in Plaid

FARALLONES ISLANDS, CALIFORNIA | 1889 Boarding the steamship Pride of Jefferson with a tired and emotionally distraught eleven-year-old was easier than Fox imagined. It turned out that every adult he saw traveling with children had the same look of exhaustion and mortal dread that he himself wore. He wondered for a moment if they all … Continue reading 6:2 Islands of the Dead

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA | 1889 A wet, gray blanket lay over the bustling San Francisco waterfront as Fox and his ersatz daughter rushed to make the steamship that would take them across the Pacific Ocean to Hawai‘i. The pair had been traveling a day and night, taking the Central Pacific Railroad down from Sacramento where … Continue reading 6:1 Leaving California

MILAKALE, KAUA‘I, THE REPUBLIC OF HAWAI‘I  |  1889 Jun was in the small taro patch he had cultivated just out the back door of his kitchen when Maleko Mahoe, the nephew of one of the native staff employed by the Lanthiers, came running up from the direction of the beach. “Mr. Jun!” the breathless boy … Continue reading 5:3 Becalmed

MILAKALE, KAUA‘I, THE REPUBLIC OF HAWAI‘I  |  1889 The strikingly beautiful Anias Casey hadn’t yet turned twenty when she met her dashing young sugar baron at a society ball on San Francisco’s Market Street. The young Miss Casey had been busy making quite an impression in the rough-and-tumble city with disarmingly attentive eyes the color … Continue reading 5:2 A Place at the Table

MILAKALE, KAUA‘I, THE REPUBLIC OF HAWAI‘I  |  1889 The Lanthier House at Milakale, which everyone on that part of the island simply called the Big House, lounged atop the ridge overlooking a verdant sloping valley running all the way down to the ocean. The dazzling white two-story main structure was surrounded with expansive lanais, or … Continue reading 5:1 The Big House

FIESTA, CALIFORNIA  |  1889 The preacher followed Philomena’s instructions to a dusty blue clapboard house on the main street of town. The girl jumped down from the horse and ran across the hard, sunbaked yard. “Hold up!” Fox shouted. It slowly dawned on him that there might be something in that house that a child … Continue reading 4:2 Is There No One?

FIESTA, CALIFORNIA  |  1889 What Philomena considered her second life began with a fireball streaking across the night sky, an apt metaphor for the way her adoptive father Mordecai approached the world. Fox hadn’t so much adopted the young girl as he had grabbed her as one would grab a valise before escaping out the … Continue reading 4:1 Smoke and Ash