Aftershocks (review)

Jessie Wainwright and her physician father are constantly at odds over her desire to become a doctor, an occupation he's convinced no respectable woman enters. Respectability, though, is in questionable supply in the Wainwright house when Jessie discovers that her father has gotten the beautiful young Chinese maid pregnant, and the girl has fled the household from shame. While this dilemma forms the backbone of Lavender's novel, it just begins to suggest the weight of soap-operatic subplotting in which Jessie and her family and acquaintances are entangled. There's the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, for starters; a triangle of unrequited love among her best friend, her brother, and a handsome, ambitious young Chinese man; a problematic flirtation between the doctor's secretary and a corrupt land dealer; an ailing mother; an insufferable aunt; Jessie's own romantic interest in a selfless doctor; a quest for the missing maid; Jessie's determination to find and claim her little half-sibling; and a heap of lies and deceits that keep the action chugging forward. Chinese characters fall into predictable types—the wise houseboy; the delicate, vulnerable little flower; the inscrutable denizens of Chinatown; and some evil, dissipated opium smokers in a brief cameo appearance. Jessie gets her guy, Dr. Wainwright endows his love child, the secretary dumps the rotter, and it gives nothing away to say that everyone who doesn't die a tragic or righteous death lives happily ever after. It's more silly than sordid, but it just could be somebody's guilty pleasure.