CHINATOWN MISSION

When Lorna Davidson hikes up her bustle and boards the train west to teach the Domestic Arts to the unfortunate women seeking shelter at the Presbyterian Mission House in San Francisco, she encounters one dashing rogue, Jonathan Blackford, and one bumbling marine-hygiene proselytizer, Abner Leatherwood. The rogue rescues her from an avalanche, flirts, puffs on a cheroot, and vanishes. The proselytizer escorts her to the Mission House, rents a room under hers in a boardinghouse, and, surprisingly, befriends the criminal element with bribes. Lorna is soon assisting Donaldina Cameron, the mission’s matriarch, in saving “singsong” girls from their unholy cribs in Chinatown, defying the Tongs, clearing out opium dens, debating the morality of sailors with union organizer Connor MacDiarmond, and bumping into the rogue, known locally as Johnny Black, the owner of the Bryant Street Gambling Club. Despite his “little-foot” wife and Lorna’s religious upbringing, they begin an affair that will be interrupted by her abduction, marauding slave traders, Tong wars, and the great earthquake of ’06. Midst the rubble, fires, and death, Abner reveals he too has another name and an honorable profession, but Lorna spurns both him and the rogue to complete her mission: rescuing abused and mistreated women.

Burrows (Miss Sedgewick and the Spy, 2000) offers a highly sanitized version of turn-of-the-century San Francisco, with the plight of sailors, indentured Chinese workers, prostitutes, and the toil of real-life activist Donaldina Cameron playing second fiddle to her heroine’s love life.