"April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed. Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly...

Fifteen-year-old Mercy Wong is determined to break from poverty in Chinatown, and she gains admittance to a prestigious finishing school through a mix of cunning and bribery. She soon discovers that getting in was the easiest part, and must carve a niche among the spoiled heiresses. When the earthquake strikes on April 18, Mercy and her classmates are forced to a survivor encampment, but her quick-witted leadership rallies them to help in the tragedy's...

Just turned twelve, Lily is the oldest of the three children in her Chinese American family living in San Francisco when the 1906 earthquake hits; her family has survived the quake, but as the city starts to burn Lily and her younger brother are separated from the others and must get to the safety of Oakland across the bay and hope that the rest of their family and friends are there waiting for them--but between the fire and the anti-Chinese violence...