Outrun the Moon

Outrun the Moon is the story of a girl from Chinatown trying to get the education she thinks she needs to start a successful business, dreaming to make enough money to move her family out of poverty. Problem is, this is set in San Francisco...in 1906. If you know your history, you know what's coming. 

With the help of her would-be boyfriend Tom, Mercy Wong bribes her way into St. Clare's Academy for Girls, hoping to get a white girls' education and therefore be more successful in starting her own business. While this sort of works, she does quickly learn that the classes for upperclass white young ladies aren't exactly economics (comportment, embroidery and French...so useful), and that it isn't easy to pretend to be a Chinese heiress (the ruse forced upon her by the school board member that accepted her bribe). 

Mercy manages to befriend an Italian girl that just wants to cook for people and slowly adds others to her side: a feisty redhead from Texas, her shy best friend, and one of a pair of South Carolinian twins. Unfortunately her secret is soon revealed, but on the same morning, the earthquake hits. The nicer of the Southern twins is killed, but the other girls, including Mercy's nasty French roommate who also happens to be the daughter of the school board member who got her in, make it out, alongside the headmistress who has it out for Mercy. 

Revealed before they leave the school is the fact that the young priest had been sleeping with the French roommate's mother, something they successfully hide from the girl, although they do find a subtle way to let her know that her mother didn't make it.

Living in a park, the girls put aside any remaining differences to work together to survive. Mercy learns her mother and younger brother were killed, but her father and Tom make it back to her at the end of the book. 

It's a great book, one of the better ones I've read about the earthquake and Chinatown during that time period. A lot of authors writing about the earthquake choose to aim for Chinatown as a setting. Interesting. Mercy is an excellent POV character, although she does have moments where she seems a bit too ahead of her time. I loved Francesca, the Italian cook, and Katie, the wealthy but very down to earth redhead from Texas.