Sister Noon [Paperback]

We meet 40-year-old spinster Lizzie Hayes, volunteer treasurer of the Ladies Relief Home, familiarly called the Brown Ark, a residential facility for homeless children made comfortable with donated furnishings representing "the worst taste of several decades."

Lizzie had been a "passive and biddable" child beneath whose "tractable surface lay romance and rebellion." She was now "hard to dissuade and hard to intimidate." Persistent when it came to raising funds for the Home, Lizzie lived in a dangerous place, a "city propelled in equal parts by drunken abuse and sober recompense," where there were six men to every woman and 700 gambling/watering holes.

Nonetheless, Lizzie is advised by Mary Ellen "Mammy" Pleasant that she can do anything she pleases, "You don't have to be the same person your whole life." This is apt tutelage from one who knows as that may be precisely what Mrs. Pleasant did. An enigmatic woman in life as well as in fiction, sometimes revered, at other times vilified, she has been called the "Mother of Civil Rights in California" and the "Fabulous Negro Madam." Born a Georgia slave, she cleverly amassed a fortune which she dedicated to favored philanthropic causes.

As this author imagines in "Sister Noon," Lizzie's life is changed forever when Mrs. Pleasant appears at the Home and asks for her. Although Lizzie has never spoken with the 70-year-old woman, she knew Mrs. Pleasant worked as a housekeeper although she "was rich as a railroad magnate's widow." It was said the infamous woman "had a small green snake tattooed in a curl around one breast.....she was a voodoo queen.....she would, for a price, make a man die of love."

Mrs. Pleasant has come to deliver 5-year-old orphan Jenny Ijub to the care of the home. Jenny is a mysterious child described as not quite truthful with her claims of once owning a pony, a parrot, and a silver cup. As time passes she is more and more given to restless nights, and her assertions grow more fanciful - her father "had been as rich as a sultan," she had seen fairies, ghosts, angels, and she didn't believe in God. When Jenny creates a ruckus at an outing, she claims that a man in green pants has tried to kidnap her.

Yet it is the little girl who becomes the catalyst for Lizzie's rebellion against the constrictive society in which she was raised.

"Sister Noon" is a superbly realized recreation of an 1850s San Franciso peopled by quirky, smart characters. Ms. Fowler, an author with practiced eye and arresting pen, has constructed a tale that absorbs, amuses, and sometimes skewers the complacent.

`Sister Noon' is set in late Nineteenth-century San Francisco. The Civil War has been over for several years, the local population has grown, and the city is just discovering its identity. Whether they know it or not, people are becoming prepared for the new century, hanging on loosely to old ideas and ideals and sometimes resisting new ones.

Lizzie works at a shelter for mostly orphaned children. Lizzie is the classic spinster: only in her early 30's, she is already an old maid in the social circles of San Francisco, with no hopes for permanent male companionship.

A different type of companion arrives in the form of a little girl named Jenny. Jenny is brought to the shelter by a Mrs. Pleasant, a strange, beautiful woman who is rumored to be a witch, a voodoo priestess, or something even more bizarre. The introduction of Jenny and Mrs. Pleasant causes Lizzie to examine her own life in ways she had never before imagined, and call into question beliefs that were formerly firmly planted in her being.

Fowler is a master of the economy of words. She gives us just enough description of the characters and their surroundings without over-doing it. She expertly introduces marvelous characters and situations that draw us deeper and deeper into the story until the final page. Fowler creates a world from the distant past that is both familiar and strange. Perhaps her sparse description makes us hunger for more. Perhaps it's the eerie mood she creates out of everyday events and objects. However you label it, Fowler's writing is magic and addictive. Don't be surprised if you find yourself under Fowler's spell, buying all of her books. And what a great spell to be under. Enjoy.

336 pages