At the age of 104 years old, Louise Cunningham plays in the San Lorenzo River with a young hippie who is intrigued by her stories of old.
Louise and her confidants, Amy, Dorthy, Ruby, and Constance come together at a time when California’s culture of new freedom and opportunity is full of promise. The gold rush is essentially over and San Francisco is well on its way to becoming an epicenter of art and society on the West Coast.
Louise is born in San Francisco to her French immigrant parents in 1880. Her father is entangled in the Panama Canal corruption more than he realizes when he begins a new life for his family on the west coast.
Amy is being raised by her seaworthy father at a boatyard in the bay where she is without a mother except for Mother Ocean, herself. When it comes to sailing, ‘the little pirate’ knows no boundaries between the boats that her father builds…and those who own them.
Sisters, Dorthy and Ruby escape horrific childhoods in the High Sierras when they are rescued by travelers along the roadside. The near-feral girls find their own coping mechanisms in their journeys toward civilization. Ruby is impulsive in romance. For Dorthy, the importance of love is to protect. She was born into the Wild West, and the Wild West was born into her.
Constance, the daughter and only child of a carousel builder in New York, joins The Bohemian Girls Art Club during trips across the country on the transcontinental railroad. She carries her mother’s elite social grace at best she can, having the mind and heart of an architectural engineer. Badgered by her mother’s closed mind and social expectations, Constance needs the bohemian girls for her strength of character most of all.
Historically based, The Bohemian Girls Art Club of San Francisco 1800-1906 includes Jack London, Sarah Bernhardt and many other real-life characters of the times, many whom Louise Cunningham knew. The book comes to life with authentic settings and a timeline of true historical events that carry the intimate lives of five young girls becoming turn-of-the-century women of the west coast art scene.