From the Bookshelf of Retro Chapter Chicks …

The Bohemians

Jasmin Darznik

Start date: July 1, 2021

Finish date: July 31, 2021

Discussion: Buddy Reads

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* Buddy Reads 2025
By Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ Jenn Ƹ̴… , Founding Retro Chick · 128 posts · 22 views

last updated Aug 03, 2025 05:15AM

* Historical Fiction Timeline Tag
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What Members Thought

Sep 12, 2022 Celia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2022-kindle-counted, kindle-list, historical-fiction-read, 2022-read, ten-year-challenge, vero-book-club, elyse-review

One of the better historical fictions I have read and very precious to me on a personal level.

in 2017, I travelled to San Jose CA to meet a fellow reader who I first encountered on Goodreads. In our four days together, one day was spent in San Francisco enjoying a tour of SF on a tour bus. This experience is easily one of the best travel experiences of my life. Imagine when I found that this book takes place almost entirely in one of my favorite cities.

San Francisco 1918 - we meet Dorothea Lange One of the better historical fictions I have read and very precious to me on a personal level.

in 2017, I travelled to San Jose CA to meet a fellow reader who I first encountered on Goodreads. In our four days together, one day was spent in San Francisco enjoying a tour of SF on a tour bus. This experience is easily one of the best travel experiences of my life. Imagine when I found that this book takes place almost entirely in one of my favorite cities.

San Francisco 1918 - we meet Dorothea Lange newly arrived from NJ/NY to start a new life as a photographer on her own. Her first experience, though, was devastating: a pickpocket took all of her money leaving her penniless. But luck was on her side. She meets Caroline Lee, beautiful and talented. They bond and Dorothea is eventually able to open her own portrait studio. Caroline is her assistant.

There are many historical elements and people discussed in this book: the 1903 earthquake, the Spanish flu epidemic, the racism and exclusion of Chinese in local life, to name a few. Many famous female photographers are included as characters. Ansel Adams, he of Yosemite picture fame, is also a character. I found out that he was a piano player in San Francisco who contracted the Spanish flu. Upon recovery, he left the city and never returned.

IN later years, during the depression, Lange left the studio to travel the countryside and take pictures of "common folk". Dorothea had polio as a child and a life-long limp resulted. The poor and destitute in the depression camps accepted her more readily because of this impediment. In 1936, she saw a sign Pea Pickers Wanted, found the camp, and took photographs of a woman and her children. The most iconic of these, Migrant Mother, she took that day. This photo is on the cover of another outstanding historical fiction novel, Mary Coin, which I have also read and loved.

Upon reading The Bohemians, my understanding of Dorothea Lange is more complete. This book reveals more of her younger life. I DO love my historical fiction, with all it reveals and teaches me.

"I always felt lucky to have landed in San Francisco. Despite everything that happened with Caroline and the complicated guilt I carried as a result of it, my life there had brought many gifts. I found friendship like I’d never known, I found love, I found my work and, finally, a life worth living."

5 stars ...more

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