Sister Noon

Travel Guide

San Francisco in the gilded age – a town full of quirky characters with mysterious pasts and even shadier presents. The city is one with a unique past too – once a major focal point of the Gold Rush and all the excitement and activity that entailed, there is now a city in flux. a city on the move and one where voodoo is not too far away.

“In the 1850s, most of the people who made up San Francisco’s society had once been or still were distinctly disreputable”

The Brown Ark is the home which acts as a barrier to the outside world and an escape from it although for one girl, Jenny, she is the target of jibes and unkindness since she is new to the home, spins elaborate tales and not like the others. No’ one seems to know how her parents are. The  home is brown and staid in contrast to the glittering city outside.

By the 1890s San Francisco was an entirely different city from the one Mrs Radford had left behind. The streets were paved. The sand was landscaped. Cable Cars ran up and down Nob Hill.

“The city was propelled in equal parts by drunken abuse and sober recompense”

Mrs Pleasant is a lady who saunters into the city shrouded by mystery and secrets. She was a former slave and there are whispers of a dubious past. Voodoo features but her real quirk is having been a housekeeper for several figures in the city so she knows the nuances of this world better than most. One house she worked at was called ‘the House of mystery’

When three such different characters come in contact with one another against a backdrop of a city in flux, with mysticism, family, women, and race relations in 1890s San Francisco battling with the famous fog.