Daughter Of Fortune

At the port of San Francisco, Captain John arrives on the Fortuna with the second shipment of fresh produce from Chile, packed in glacier ice. He shackles his drunken sailors on the deck so they will not abandon the ship to search for gold in California. Feliciano and his brother send boats to ferry the passengers and the cargo to the dock. The first shipment sold at such a profit that Paulina bought a second steamship for her business empire. Captain John brings a message to Feliciano from his wife. Paulina plans to sail on the next voyage of the Fortuna with her children and servants to join Feliciano at a new San Francisco home. Feliciano predicts the coming end of the gold rush will reduce San Francisco to a sleepy town again. However, his visionary wife, Paulina, perceives the city will be “the gateway to the Pacific” (290).

While dining at the best San Francisco hotel with Feliciano and his brother, Captain John encounters his old friend Jacob Todd. The fraudulent missionary has transformed into a Yankee journalist named Jacob Freemont, complete with sideburns, a checked suit, and snakeskin boots. Jacob failed in his efforts to organize a Utopian community in England. Not forgetting what he owed to Jacob, Feliciano paid his passage to America and found Jacob employment at the city’s leading newspaper. After dinner, Jacob takes his men friends to see a novelty of San Francisco night life: a beautiful young Chinese woman named Ah Toy who has devised a way to make money from men peering at her through peepholes, unable to touch her. His friends laugh at this ridiculous way of seeing a woman in the male-dominated city. When Captain John and Jacob enjoy a late drink together, Captain John confides that Eliza and Joaquín fell in love and that Eliza may have followed Joaquín to California. Captain John asks Jacob to try to find Eliza, since he travels to the mining camps.

Meanwhile, Eliza remains with Joe Bonecrusher’s caravan as the piano player. Known as “Chile Boy,” Eliza feels so comfortable in men’s clothes that she vows never to wear a corset again. Joe Bonecrusher and the whores believe that Chile Boy is homosexual. Joe Bonecrusher thinks it is not Chile Boy’s fault that he lacks a beard, just as Joe Bonecrusher feels that “she has been born a man in a woman’s body” (296). Joe also adopted an Indian child, “Tom No-Tribe,” orphaned by vigilantes. When Eliza reads erotic books aloud at the request of Babalu the Bad, the writing reminds her of the style of Miss Rose. 

The winter snow prompts miners to move into town until spring. Joe Bonecrusher halts the traveling caravan and operates the brothel from a rented barn. The miners distinguish between decent women and prostitutes, calling the latter “soiled doves.” However, during an epidemic of dysentery, Joe Bonecrusher wins the loyalty and respect of miners by tirelessly nursing ill men in remote cabins. A Quaker blacksmith, James Morton, disapproves of Joe’s method of earning money but assists her with the ill men. James helped fugitive slaves escape through the underground railroad back in his native Ohio. Despite his scruples, James starts to fall in love with Esther, one of Joe’s “soiled doves,” who turned to prostitution to escape her father’s beatings.

In January 1850, Babalu the Bad finds a half-frozen man at the barn door. Obviously in trouble with the law, the stranger fiercely prevents Joe from sending for a doctor. To Eliza, the unknown man “smelled of evil” (306). When the stranger’s two fingers start showing signs of gangrene, Joe announces they will have to be amputated. To everyone’s surprise, Eliza succeeds in amputating the fingers, recalling Tao’s teachings. Babalu the Bad, admiring her courage, says, “You’re a real man, Chile Boy” (308). The Mexican stranger, known as “Jack,” replies to Eliza’s description of Joaquín by identifying him as “Murieta” instead of “Andieta” and a Mexican instead of a Chilean. Two weeks after Jack departs, they find a two-pound sack of gold dust outside their door as payment for saving Jack’s life. Joe is horrified when she finds out that Jack killed a miner and stole the gold dust.

The night of Eliza’s birthday, Joe’s barn catches fire, and she loses everything she owns. Eliza runs inside the burning structure to save the Indian boy Tom No-Tribe, but Babalu has to rescue both of them. Grateful for Joe’s compassion during the epidemic, the recovered miners take up a collection and install the “soiled doves” in a comfortable house. Joe decides to settle in the town because “for the first time in her chaotic life she felt accepted in a community” (314). Eliza decides that if Joaquín does not appear by spring, she will have to bid farewell to her friends to continue her search.

Tao is surprised by how much he misses Eliza’s companionship since he had not imagined that a woman from a foreign culture could be a friend. Tao’s loneliness, however, does not compel him to select another Chinese wife because he believes it is impossible to replace the love he shared with Lin. Tao has not communed with Lin’s spirit since the ship voyage. He concludes that Lin’s spirit is wandering, lost in the vast, new land, unable to find Tao. When a zhong yi friend seeks a wife for himself from China, Tao advises him to ask for a healthy wife, realizing that Lin would have been happier with natural, large feet and strong lungs.

Tao moves from Sacramento to San Francisco in April 1850. He witnesses the patriotic celebration when the news arrives that California has become a state in the Union. Many impoverished miners are sailing home, disillusioned by the difficulties of quickly making a fortune. San Francisco has changed from a camp of transients to a well-planned city. Tao plans to practice medicine in Chinatown to earn money and return to Hong Kong or visit Dr. Hobbs in London.

Paulina disembarks in San Francisco, excited about the city’s potential. She informs her skeptical husband, Feliciano, “The first to arrive will become aristocracy in a couple of years” (323). Exhausted by his transport to San Francisco of the demanding Paulina and her children on the Fortuna, Captain John meets Jacob for dinner. Captain John discreetly published his sister’s erotic writings in London and deposited the stupendous profits in a bank account for Rose, grateful for her care of Eliza. When Captain John asks about his daughter Eliza, Jacob states that she has not visited San Francisco. At a dance hall, Captain John spots Azucena Placeres wearing the gold and turquoise brooch he gave to Eliza. Trying to protect Eliza from her father, Azucena lies to him, informing him that Eliza died at sea.

Eliza spends the summer of 1850 in the mining town nursing Joe, Babalu, and three of the whores suffering from dysentery. James, the Quaker blacksmith, weds Esther. Eliza reads news items about a bandit named Joaquín Murieta and his cruel accomplice, Three-Finger Jack, attacking Americans. A new tax on the mining operations of foreigners increases racial hatred between Hispanics and whites. Eliza agonizes over whether her lover Joaquín is an outlaw. In December, Tao arrives at Joe’s house and asks Eliza to return with him to San Francisco. After having his queue cut off by white hoodlums, Tao dresses like an American. He tells Eliza that his plan to return to China is on hold.