The Earth Dragon Awakes

Set in 1906 San Francisco, this historical novel for young readers follows two boys, eight-year-old Henry Travis and nine-year-old Chin, through the catastrophic earthquake and firestorm that destroyed much of the city. Though the characters are fictional, the events are drawn from historical fact.

On the evening of Tuesday, April 17, the Travis household on Sacramento Street bustles with activity. Henry's parents prepare for a night at the opera to see tenor Enrico Caruso. Ah Sing, the family's Chinese houseboy, calmly manages the household while Henry and Ah Sing's son, Chin, help out. Henry wishes he could try his new Easter roller skates at a skating carnival, but his mother refuses. Henry's dog, Sawyer, has been howling and shivering all day for no apparent reason.

After the Travises leave, the boys do their schoolwork. Chin has been in America only two years, attending Chinese school in Chinatown while hoping to enroll in an American school soon. He reflects on the grueling immigration process: months memorizing every detail of his village, followed by a week of interrogation by officials who would have deported both him and his father over a single mistake. Ah Sing's salary supports Chin's mother, grandparents, and other relatives in China. The boys share a passion for cheap adventure novels called "penny dreadfuls" about cowboys and lawmen, which Henry uses to help Chin learn English. Both dream of becoming heroes like the fictional Marshal Earp, finding their fathers' occupations dull by comparison.

The narrative explains the science underlying the story. San Francisco sits where two tectonic plates meet along the San Andreas Fault, a fracture stretching 650 miles. The plates grind against each other constantly, sometimes producing earthquakes. It has been 38 years since the city's last strong earthquake, and residents have forgotten how destructive they can be.

After midnight, Chin and Ah Sing return to Chinatown, a densely packed neighborhood of about 10,000 Chinese residents. Their neighbor Ah Quon, a butcher, reports that the animals in his shop are terrified. He worries about the "Earth Dragon," a figure from Chinese folk belief said to cause earthquakes when it stirs. Ah Sing dismisses the fear, but Chin thinks of Sawyer's strange behavior and silently asks the Earth Dragon to stay calm. In bed, reading a penny dreadful, Chin reflects that his kind, hardworking father is no hero compared to Marshal Earp.

At 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, the Pacific Plate rips the earth's surface open for nearly 290 miles. The earthquake releases more force than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Nearly 343,000 people lie sleeping in San Francisco.

In the Travis household, Sawyer's howling wakes Henry just before dawn. Mild shaking turns violent: his oak bed hops across the room, walls groan, and plaster rains down. The chimney topples into his parents' bedroom, collapsing their floor, and Henry's door jams shut. In Chinatown, Ah Sing forces Chin under a table as their tenement collapses floor by floor. The table saves their lives, but they are buried alive. Across the city, one-sixth of the buildings, constructed on landfill, experience liquefaction: underground water mixes with loose soil, turning solid ground into quicksand that swallows entire houses.

Buried in darkness, Chin and Ah Sing dig blindly through debris until Chin's fingers bleed. His father urges Chin to save himself, calling him "the important one." Chin scrapes open a narrow tunnel, crawls upward, and is pulled free by Ah Quon. Together they dig Ah Sing out. Chin realizes for the first time how brave his father truly is.

At the Travis house, Mr. Travis pries open Henry's jammed door. An elderly couple, the Rossis, are trapped under their collapsed home next door. Sawyer leads rescuers to the right spot, and Mr. Travis organizes neighbors to dig, calming everyone through aftershocks. Henry watches his father and the ordinary neighbors and realizes they are acting like real heroes, braver than any fictional outlaw because the forces of nature are deadlier than any gunslinger. The Rossis are found alive, and Mr. Travis pays a surrey driver $50, all his cash, to take them to the hospital.

At Portsmouth Square in Chinatown, a stampeding bull charges through a crowd of refugees. Ah Sing throws himself in front of it to protect Chin. A policeman shoots the animal, but Ah Sing's ankle is injured. Chin feels gratitude and shame for having thought his father was no hero.

The fire department faces cascading crises: their chief has been crushed, and water mains are broken in 300 places. A new blaze, the "Ham and Egg fire," starts in Hayes Valley when a woman lights her stove, unaware of a crack in her chimney. Ocean winds fan it into a monster that devours city hall and merges with fires already burning south and east. On the Travises' block, neighbors fight spreading flames alone until a strong aftershock collapses a house into the fire, nearly killing Mr. Travis. Henry crawls to his father and helps extinguish the flames on his clothes. He no longer wants to be like Marshal Earp; he wants to be like his father.

Chin, Ah Sing, and Ah Quon earn ferry fare by loading a wealthy merchant's wagon. Ah Quon tells Chin that his father's real bravery is not about the earthquake but about leaving his family and working for years in a foreign country. Their journey to the ferry building is a harrowing maze of collapsed buildings, a wall of flame along Market Street, and thousands of rats fleeing the fire. At the mobbed terminal, Chin fights to protect his injured father and Ah Quon from the crushing crowd, refusing to save himself when urged. They board an overloaded ferry and watch San Francisco, covered in flame, recede across the bay.

With fire closing on three sides, the Travises salvage what they can and join refugees heading north to the waterfront near Fort Mason. Henry retrieves his roller skates from his unstable bedroom despite his parents' protests and lashes them to a ladder to make a cart. At the crowded camp, Mr. Travis improvises a tent from an umbrella and lace tablecloth. When a runaway horse stampedes toward a small girl, Mr. and Mrs. Travis flap brightly colored umbrellas to startle it to a halt.

In Oakland, Ah Sing's cousin Ah Bing, a fish wholesaler, takes them in. The three major fires merge into the Great Fire, a firestorm generating winds hot enough to ignite wood and flesh on contact. Firemen, soldiers, and volunteers dynamite mansions along Van Ness Avenue to create firebreaks, retreating and starting over block by block when the fire slips past. On Telegraph Hill, residents beat back flames with sacks soaked in water and then wine. Early Saturday morning, April 21, three days after the earthquake, the Great Fire stops and begins to retreat. The exhausted defenders drive it back until the flames die.

That evening, the Travises arrive in Oakland on a navy ship, singed and carrying only the umbrellas. Chin and Henry embrace. Later, standing on the pier, they stare at the ruins. The reality hits all at once: They have lost homes, possessions, and friends. Everyone cries, having been too busy surviving to grieve. Rain begins to fall, and Mr. Travis opens an umbrella, winking at Henry and admitting they are "very handy."

Eleven days after the earthquake, Ah Sing borrows a wagon to take the Travises to tent camps in Golden Gate Park. Henry objects that Ah Sing and Chin cannot stay: Chinese residents are barred from the camps, and officials want to relocate them rather than allow them to rebuild in their old neighborhood. Mr. Travis promises to help, offering legal connections to fight the relocation. They ride into San Francisco and stare at the devastation. Then they hear a clink: Three men sort through rubble, salvaging bricks. Mr. Travis says people cannot wait to start over.

Henry finds a surviving penny dreadful in the dust. Chin declines it, saying he has had enough excitement. Henry looks at their parents on the wagon, undismayed and ready to rebuild, and whispers to Chin: "And we don't have to look far for heroes. They were right under our noses all this time" (105). He tosses the book aside, climbs back on the wagon with Chin and Sawyer, and looks ahead to the adventure of building a new city.