The Race to Splendor by Ciji Ware Review

Race to Splendor
ISBN: 9781402222696

By: Ciji Ware

Published: March 2011
                                                 
“Blindly, she inched along a floor pitching as violently as the deck of a boat in a midwinter storm. Her hands touched the threshold opening onto the ninth floor foyer at the instant the glass transom over her head exploded into a thousand pieces. Reflexively, Amelia cast her right arm in front of her face, but not before blood spurted from her scalp and ran down her checks. She crumpled beneath the doorframe, curling into a ball. Amelia screamed again as a twenty-five-foot expanse of wood paneling and masonry pitched outward and plunged nine stories to Montgomery Street below. She knew that no structure on landfill, no matter how well built, could withstand much more shaking without collapsing.
Then, just as suddenly, the convulsions subsided.”

"Early in 1906, the ground in San Francisco shook buildings and lives from their comfortable foundations.
Amidst rubble, corruption, and deceit, two women—young architects in a city and field ruled by men—find themselves racing the clock and each other during the rebuilding of competing hotels in the City by the Bay.
Based on meticulous research, A Race to Splendor tells the story of the audacious people of one of the world’s great cities rebuilding and reinventing themselves after immense human tragedy. Filled with courage, passion, and conflict, Amelia Bradshaw’s spirit will capture your imagination as she strives to redraft her life amidst the ruins with both help and hindrance from a wayward son of privilege who pulls her into worlds she’d never have known."

My Thoughts:

A Race to Splendor by Ciji Ware, is a very well researched novel about the 1906 earthquake.
The San Francisco earthquake took the lives of approximately 3000 people and left more than 200,000 homeless.
The book also tells the story of Julia Morgan, a woman architect, who is far ahead of her time. In a world that generally did not accept women to have educations let alone enter a man's world as a professional architect.
Julia Morgan is a real person of history who studied and graduated from Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Amelia is also a graduate of the same school that Julia attended and is hired by Julia to work in her architecture firm.
Recently returned from Paris, Amelia returns to San Francisco to find that her grandfather has passed away.
The Bay View Hotel, that her grandfather owned and was supposed to be her inheritance, but she finds that her father has gambled the hotel away.
The new owner is J.D Thayer who is a less than honorable man.
I found the writing to be very believable that I could relate to the damage that this earthquake had done to property and people in San Francisco.
Amelia also has a falling out with Julia and is hired by J.D to work to rebuild the hotel.

There are greedy and licentious characters that make this story suspenseful and of course there is an element of romance. So while people try to get their lives back together in spite of the obstacles that hinder the rebuilding of the Bay View Hotel.
The goal is to finish the hotel by April 18th, 1907, a year after the earthquake but Amelia and J.D. realize that because of a fire in the nearly completed hotel, that they will not be able to finish by the scheduled opening date. There are also prejudices against not only women, but to the Chinese people who work for Amelia.
After reading Ms.Ware's novels I find it amazing that no matter what historical period she writes about, there is a lot of research that goes into her writing.
Ciji Ware is also the author of A Cottage by the Sea, Island of the Swans and Wicked Company. I highly recommend any of these books.
Thanks to Sourcebooks for the review copy of The Race to Splendor and was not monetarily compensated for my review.