In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing's fallen Summer Palace. His patronage offers Gemma and Suling the chance of a lifetime, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a devastating earthquake rips San Francisco apart and Thornton disappears, leaving behind a mystery reaching further than anyone could have imagined... Until the Phoenix Crown reappears five years later at a sumptuous Paris costume ball, drawing Gemma and Suling together in one last desperate quest for justice...
Two accomplished narrators, Saskia Maarleveld and Katharine Chin, set forth this story of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the people caught up in its devastation. Both narrators are skilled at portraying emotions, revving up suspense, and mastering many varieties of accents and dialects. Maarleveld 's urbane and sonorous voice brings to life the ambitious opera ingenue, Gemma, and Chin's
