My throat tightened, thinking of the picture above the fireplace. Little Luke had big eyes and a contagious smile. How Hanna must have loved him, and how heartbreaking for her that he’d never known his real father. Had Peter discovered the truth of the romance between Hanna and Lucas?
I set the blue jay feather down. Maybe Peter had, and maybe he hadn’t. The truth could’ve been an unspoken secret between husband and wife. Reaching into the box, I picked up a sepia-toned photograph of a bearded man holding a boy tightly around his middle. Both smiled widely. The caption read, “Peter and Luke.” I smiled. Peter had loved his stepchild as his own. There was no doubt about it.
“I think that’s everything,” Mike said. “Just the picture and a few trinkets. I’m not sure what meaning they held for her, but I figured they belonged to Hanna because this photo is of Hanna’s husband, Peter, and their son.”
“Um,” I said, pressing my lips together.
“Oh jeez,” Mike said, rubbing his face. “I mean Lucas Havensworth’s son. Sorry, it’s still tough for me to wrap my head around.”
“It’s okay, man,” Hunter said, patting Mike’s shoulder. “When Sarah was writing her article, I could barely keep the facts straight. She’d try to tell me about it and I’d just get this blank look.”
Mike laughed. As he and Hunter started talking about the Giants and whether or not they could win the World Series a fourth time, I tilted the box forward. Something rattled in the bottom. Scraping my fingers along the edge, I pulled out a tightly rolled tube of paper. When I undid the rubber band, out tumbled a silver ring.
I gasped. The worn metal had become thin with age. Placing it in my palm, I looked at the intricate design: two hands held a heart topped with a crown. I recognized it as an Irish claddagh ring—a very old one. Hunter and Mike’s conversation receded as I held the beautiful antique.
For reasons I couldn’t explain, I wanted to cry. Gently setting the ring down on the table, I unfurled the thin piece of paper, smoothing it out with my fingers. In shaky cursive, someone had written a letter.
Dearest Margaret,
I miss you more with every passing day. I keep your grandmother’s ring with me always, so that you will stay close to my heart. I am an old woman now, with a husband, Peter, a son, two daughters, and grandchildren of my own. I love them dearly, but they do not know of the life we shared in San Francisco, in a time that is now forgotten. Those days were grim, Margaret, but you were my light in the darkness. My little girl, Maggie, reminds me so much of you.
Remember how you helped me into the green dress we borrowed from Miss Delia? I can still feel the velvet. My mind might be as old and cloudy as an unpolished looking glass, but I will never forget what fun we had together. For heaven’s sake, you convinced me to steal the dress! (And Miss Delia, such a cow, she deserved it.) You taught me to dare to see myself as a fine woman, worthy of a fine man.
I loved Lucas Havensworth with all my heart, even though I could not keep him. But I see him in my dreams, and I see his soul in our child’s eyes. That is not to say I do not love my dear Peter, but it is different. You understand. How much love have I experienced in this life? To think I used to fear love would make me weak.
I was a fool, Margaret.
Instead, love has made me strong enough to leave that place of sadness and to start my life anew. Both Lucas and I are better for it, I am sure. Many days while rolling dough for brötchen, I have longed to feel him standing at my back, and to see you out the kitchen window, walking up the drive. You are wearing your green dress, rosy-cheeked and smiling, just as beautiful and young as I remember you. It was but a mirage. Yet in my heart, I’ve always known you were by my side.
Now death knocks at my door. I fear it not, for I know I will see you both again. And there, in whatever lies yonder, I will embrace you. Do you know how many years I have waited to see your smile, dear Margaret? I have not forgotten you, silly hen. Please tell me you will be there waiting.
Your friend forever,
Hannelore Schaeffer
I wiped a tear from my cheek. Hanna felt Margaret and Lucas in the same way I sensed my mother and father always watching over me. Whether separated by distance or death—love, loyalty, and friendship bound us together. Like Margaret’s claddagh ring, we had formed an unbreakable circle of hearts and hands.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my editor, Lucia Macro. You are a privilege to work with, and I always look forward to reading your e-mails. You have shaped this novel into something wonderful with your vision of re-structuring. Thank you to my publicist, Michelle Podberezniak, and to the team at William Morrow working hard behind the scenes. Diahann Sturge, thank you for the beautiful interior design, and to my production and copy editors, thank you for making sure I don’t embarrass myself!
I could not have done this without my superstar agent, Jenny Bent. Thank you, Jenny, for your keen eye, for believing in me, and for seeing this novel as a diamond in the rough. I’m also grateful to Denise Roy. I value your insights and thoughtful comments, which helped me so much when revising my manuscript.
To my critique partner, Sally Hepworth, who pushed me to dig deeper, and never to take the easy way out. I would not be writing this if not for you.
To Anna Evans, for exchanging hundreds of e-mails, keeping me sane during the submissions process, and giving me your helpful feedback on early drafts. Also thank you to Niki Robins, my most enthusiastic first reader. Your praise means the world to me. To Kat Drennan, thank you for your encouragement and suggestions.
To my mother, Carol, and my sister, Carolyn, you are my support system. Thank you to my sister, for always being a wonderful first reader—and for designing a beautiful map of the Barbary Coast for this novel. I want to be creative with you until we are a hundred years old. Mom, thank you for your unwavering belief in my writing, and for always allowing me to follow my passion.
To my girlfriends—thank you for letting me be a hermit while I worked for years on this book, and for showing me nothing but love and encouragement. You inspire me, and your laughter keeps me going. To my coworkers and former coworkers who have become my friends and confidants: you made the 9–5 worthwhile with your stories, jokes, and kindness.
To Will, my husband, for supporting me through a decade of trying make my dream of publishing a novel a reality, and never letting me give up on it. You, Bernie, and Sylvester are my whole, fur-filled universe.
And to Hazel. We haven’t met you yet, but you’re the most important person in the world to us. Dream big, little one. We love you more than you can imagine.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the author
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Meet Meredith Jaeger
About the book
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Behind the Scenes with Meredith Jaeger
Behind the Book: Historical Facts and Fiction
Reading Group Discussion Questions
About the author
Meet Meredith Jaeger
MEREDITH JAEGER has lived and traveled around the world, spending periods in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Australia. She is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, born and raised in Berkeley, California. A graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, Meredith holds a BA in modern literature. While working at a San Francisco start-up, Meredith fulfilled a lifelong dream to write a novel, the result of which was The Dressmaker’s Dowry. Like the character Hannelore Schaeffer, Meredith is also the daughter of a European immigrant who moved to California in search of a better life. Meredith lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, their infant daughter, English bulldog, and elderly cat. She’s currently at work on her next novel.
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About the book
Behind the Scenes with Meredith Jaeger
ON MY HONEYMOON IN GREECE, overlooking the Aegean Sea, I opened a leather notebook, plotted out my novel, an
d developed its characters. I have always been drawn to the gritty, dark underbelly of cities, and to the urban immigrant experience—particularly the lives of working-class Victorians and the photojournalism of Jacob Riis.
With the sparkling blue expanse of ocean before me, I envisioned narrow cobblestone streets, horse-drawn carriages, smoke-filled saloons, and the infamous Barbary Coast of 140 years ago, where citizens were murdered in the street.
It was my first vacation in years. I had been working long hours for a San Francisco startup while simultaneously planning my wedding. To have the freedom and space to let my words flow felt like sweet relief.
As a native of the Bay Area, I grew up across the water from “the City,” a place filled with artists and musicians, dive bars, quirky cafés, and family-owned businesses. But while I walked to work in 2013, it became apparent to me that San Francisco had changed. I heard constant talk of apps, series C funding, and large tech companies setting up shop.
Did the influx of new residents have any idea that San Francisco has a rich and colorful history dating from before the time of Twitter? I wanted to paint a picture for them. Immigrants— Chinese, German, Irish, Dutch, and Mexican—built the bones of our bustling metropolis. These laborers lived a life far removed from the millionaires of Nob Hill. In fact, the San Francisco of 1876 mirrors the San Francisco of today: a place of magnificent wealth displayed against dire poverty.
I knew immediately that my character Hannelore Schaeffer would be a German immigrant. My father immigrated to California from Switzerland in the 1960s, the son of German parents. He didn’t come from much, but his adventurous spirit shone like the gold flakes he panned from the Feather River. (He went on to earn his PhD in business from UC Berkeley, but always had a little bit of cowboy dust in his soul.) Hanna would be poor, and she would have the drive to make a better life for herself in this precarious land of opportunity. Allowing Hanna to fall for a businessman with a silver fortune from the Comstock Lode, I let class and societal differences to come into play.
My inspiration for Sarah Havensworth, Hanna’s present-day counterpart, came from my own heirloom engagement ring. When my husband proposed to me with a delicate cluster of diamonds from 1903, I fell in love—with him, with the beautiful piece of family jewelry, and with a story idea. What if I didn’t know whom this ring had once belonged to? (He assured me his great-aunt Peg was a very nice woman.) What if there was an incredible tale behind how the ring came to be passed down to me?
And so my novel unfolded. It wasn’t a stretch to make Sarah a writer like myself. And I had the advantage of being able to explore every street and alleyway that Hanna traversed in her frantic search for her missing friend, Margaret. I even stopped for beers at the Saloon, San Francisco’s oldest bar, which I’ve renamed the Tavern in The Dressmaker’s Dowry. On my lunch break from work, I often wander around Jackson Square, a chic neighborhood in the shadow of the Transamerica Pyramid, admiring the brick buildings that used to be dance halls, secret opium dens, and brothels. No matter how many startups move to San Francisco, its storied past will never be erased.
Behind the Book: Historical Facts and Fiction
I chose to explore San Francisco’s Barbary Coast because it represents a bawdy, brawling time in the city’s early history, so different from today’s sleek skyscrapers, ubiquitous Starbucks cafés, and trendy restaurants in what is now the Financial District and Jackson Square. I love writing historical fiction because I get to bring forgotten time periods to life, and to make unknown voices heard.
During the gold rush of 1849 and continuing into the twentieth century, San Francisco was filled with crime, gambling, opium dens, bordellos, gangs, and men getting “shanghaied”—drugged and put aboard merchant ships, where they were forced to work on the crew. A far cry from today’s businessmen ordering lattes!
In my research, I read The Barbary Coast by Herbert Asbury. San Francisco’s wild past felt palpable, its characters jumping off the page. Asbury describes the Barbary Coast as roughly bounded “on the east by waterfront and East Street, now the Embarcadero; on the south by Clay and Commercial streets; on the west by Grant Avenue and Chinatown; and on the north by Broadway, with occasional overflows into the region around North Beach and Telegraph Hill.”
One of the helpful films I watched was Sin, Fire & Gold! The Days of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast. In this KQED documentary, host Greg Sherwood joins tour guide and historian Daniel Bacon in uncovering San Francisco’s fascinating past. Lucky for me, I had easy access to the former Barbary Coast (I’ve worked in San Francisco’s Financial District on and off for years), and I spotted a series of bronze medallions marking the Barbary Coast Trail. Daniel Bacon, the founder of the trail, has devoted himself to creating the path of 180 plaques.
Barbary Coast Trail medallion, Gold Street, San Francisco. (Courtesy of the author)
I imagined my character Hanna walking along these gritty streets in her frantic search for Margaret, and how frightening and dangerous it must have been. The 3.8-mile trail winds from the beginning of Market Street through the Financial District, Chinatown, Jackson Square, and North Beach up to Fisherman’s Wharf.
Rather than have Hanna follow this exact path, I focused on Broadway, Pacific, Jackson, Kearny, and Dupont Street, which is now Grant Street in Chinatown. Broadway was known for bars so dangerous they were called “deadfalls” because patrons didn’t always emerge alive. Some saloons reportedly had trapdoors in the floor for shanghaiing sailors. Hanna visits pubs and dance halls mentioned in Asbury’s The Barbary Coast, such as the Billy Goat Saloon and the Opera Comique. The owner of the latter, Happy Jack Harrington, was a real person, infamous for his drunken antics. The location of the Opera Comique on Jackson and Kearney was known as “Murderer’s Corner.” In the 1870s, the Jackson Square neighborhood was called Devil’s Acre.
Modern-day bar named after the old neighborhood. The Devil’s Acre, 256 Columbus Avenue, at the corner of Broadway. (Courtesy of the author)
Broadway today, dotted with strip clubs reminiscent of its bawdy past. (Courtesy of the author)
San Francisco’s oldest bar, the Saloon, renamed the Tavern in my novel. 1232 Grant Avenue, San Francisco. (Courtesy of the author)
Both Hanna and Sarah visit the Tavern, which I based off the Saloon, San Francisco’s oldest bar. Just like the Tavern in The Dressmaker’s Dowry, the Saloon hosts live blues, and it is one of the few businesses in San Francisco that hasn’t been touched by gentrification. I love the rumor that the upstairs once operated as a brothel, the reason the building was saved from the raging fire following the 1906 earthquake!
Before Hanna begins her search for Margaret, we see a bit of her life in the city. She works at 42 Montgomery Street at Walton’s Tailor Shop. Here is how the street appeared in 1870:
Montgomery Street from Market, San Francisco. (Photo from the New York Public Library)
Montgomery Street from Market, San Francisco. (Courtesy of the author)
Hanna lives on Telegraph Hill, now a coveted residential address for the wealthy, but once an area home to stevedores, fishermen, and immigrant warehouse workers. They built modest homes on the hill’s slopes, and a few still exist today. While breathtaking views of the Bay can still be enjoyed from Coit Tower, Hanna also looked out at the ocean and wharf below when she painted her ship.
View from Telegraph Hill, 1870. (Photo from the New York Public Library)
Napier Lane, the street Hanna lived on. (Photo by Melisa Smith)
Hanna meets her love interest, Lucas Havensworth, at Lotta’s Fountain, a cast iron monument commissioned by the actress Lotta Crabtree as a gift to the city of San Francisco. It still stands at the intersection of Market, Kearney, and Geary Streets.
Lotta’s Fountain. (Courtesy of the author)
Lotta’s Fountain. (Courtesy of the author)
A mural in the Embarcadero Center depicting how Lotta’s Fountain once appeared. (Courtesy of the author)
Before enl
isting Lucas’s help to find Margaret, Hanna visits him at the Merchants Exchange, his place of employment.
Merchants Exchange, south side of California Street, between Leidesdorff and Montgomery Streets. (Photo from the New York Public Library)
The Merchants Exchange Building. 465 California Street. (Courtesy of the author)
Lucas and Hanna traverse the streets of the Barbary Coast together. One they might have walked down is Osgood Place, which serves as a lovely juxtaposition of the past and present—the Transamerica Pyramid looming over the brick buildings that used to be saloons, brothels, and opium dens.
Osgood Place, a street in Jackson Square, the former Barbary Coast. (Courtesy of the author)
Pieces of Sarah’s research are grounded in real life. I visited the California Historical Society at 678 Mission Street, just like Sarah did, to look through the directories from 1876. And guess what I found? A dressmaker named O’Brien!
1876 San Francisco directory. (Courtesy of the author)
The exhibit of Victorian artifacts found at the construction site of the Transbay Transit Center is real as well. Sadly, I did not get to see it. But I could vividly imagine a fragment of Hanna’s mother’s blue plate, and the boardinghouse ledger in which Hanna would have written her name.
Construction site of new Transbay Transit Center, where Victorian artifacts were found, and luxury condos in the distance. (Courtesy of the author)
And if you’re ever in San Francisco, be sure to window shop at Lang Antiques. They have an incredible 3-carat emerald ring surrounded by diamonds from the 1800s (not to mention lots of other exquisite Edwardian, Victorian, and Art Deco jewelry!) that I used as the inspiration for Sarah’s beautiful ring: Lang Antiques, 309 Sutter Street, San Francisco.
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