The Bohemians

1.

Lady photographer and Oriental girl capture San Francisco s heart.

There s a picture of us that ran in the paper in 1918. In it we re standing side by side, me with my Graflex around my neck and Caroline with a smile that dares you to look elsewhere. She s wearing a tunic with long, bell-shaped sleeves and a thick satin strap cinched at her waist. It s a kind of costume, and so is my outfit: flowy crushed-velvet dress, stacks of silver bangles, a long paisley scarf. We both have bobbed hair, except that mine s a mass of dark-blond curls and hers is black and sleek. There s a glint in Caroline s kohl-rimmed eyes, but it s a black-and-white picture, so you can t see their color, which was the color of cut glass.

Whenever I saw this picture in the years that followed, I was immediately transported back to our studio at 540 Sutter Street in San Francisco or 540, as we d called it. As if it was still just the two of us, Caroline and me, so lit up with hope and so at home. We d both gone so long thinking we had no place in the world that we couldn t imagine belonging to anything but each other. By the time that picture was taken, the studio had become our home, the home we built through grit and sheer will. We worked eighteen-hour days, Monday to Saturday. Exhausted as we always were, we loved it, every minute of it, but if there was a time we loved more than any other, it was those nights when our friends streamed down from Monkey Block. Everybody brought everybody, and 540 filled with music and dancing and brilliant talk.

Within two years all that ended and I was on my own again.

After the scandal broke and Caroline disappeared, I d see the whole story come into focus in a single frame. What happened. What I could never undo. I d see Caroline sitting on the floor, knees pulled up to her chin, head bowed. I d see her lifting her eyes and fixing me with a distant, unblinking gaze. I d see the shadow on her cheek that would

Jasmin Darznik is the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother s Hidden Life and Song of a Captive Bird. Her books have been published in seventeen countries. She was born in Tehran, Iran, and came to America when she was five years old. She holds an MFA in fiction from Bennington College, a JD from the University of California, and a PhD in English from Princeton University. Now a professor of English and creative writing at California College of the Arts, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

If you loved Song of a Captive Bird like I did, you will want to read the latest creative historical biography by Jasmin Darznik. Darznik paints an illuminative portrait of the photographer and the woman. Ms. Magazine

Lange s story begins when she arrives in 1918 San Francisco . . . spinning into an all-too relevant tale of a woman dealing with a pandemic, rising anti-immigration sentiment, and a tumultuous political climate. PopSugar

In her riveting and resonant new novel, Jasmin Darznik captures San Francisco s heyday through the eyes of one of its most iconic residents. By exploring how Dorothea Lange witnessed her troubled and momentous times, Darznik speaks directly to our own. Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

You ll never look at a Dorothea Lange photograph the same way after reading Darznik s compelling portrait of the trailblazer who carved a glorious path through 1920s San Francisco. Darznik doesn t flinch when confronting the parallels to today, whether racism or anti-immigrant sentiment, yet her impeccable research grounds the story firmly in the heyday of the Jazz Age. A superb read. Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue

Dorothea Lange once famously said, Art is an act of total attention. Jasmin Darznik s breathtaking novel The Bohemians accomplishes that and more. Not only did it have me riveted from start to finish, through her words, history powerfully speaks to the present moment. Lara Prescott, author of The Secrets We Kept

A beautiful literary portrait of the one and only Dorothea Lange. Jasmin Darznik expertly delivers in this intriguing glimpse into the woman behind those unforgettable photographs of the Great Depression s impact on humanity. Highly readable and utterly relevant to our times. I was transported.