James Dalessandro, author of "Bohemian Heart", and "Citizen Jane", now offers his latest "1906".

"Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone!" Those were the disbelieving words of Jack London, as he surveyed, on April 19, 1906, the devastation of the city by the Golden Gate.

The day before, at 5:13 A.M., a powerful earthquake, estimated to be the equivalent of 8.3 on today's Richter scale, had rocked San Francisco for forty-seven seconds, with several aftershocks following in the course of the next half hour.

As the city's inhabitants scrambled fearfully from their beds, they discovered that the colorful and lively town with which they were familiar was indeed gone, replaced by an unrecognizable cityscape. Hundreds of buildings had been leveled, thousands more were on the verge of collapse, and here and there fires were already in progress, fires which would eventually grow to rage throughout the ruined town for the next three days.

[Thank you James Dalessandro for making the story teller an Italian]. Our heroine, is a feisty young reporter, Annalisa Passarelli, an opera and theatre critic who longs to report on harder news. She becomes a key player in a massive operation to put an end to the corrupt forces that keep her city in the shackles of fear.

Along with Annalisa, we meet the bad guys, the wicked Mayor and crime bosses that run the city behind the scenes, and the members of the police department who choose crime over crimefighting. There is the evil Shanghai Kelly, who is responsible for running an operation that kidnaps men and young boys for slave labor, and the cruel pimps and madames who traffick in young Chinese girls as sex slaves for depraved politicos.

As an organized center of vice and crime Chinatown virtually came to an end on that catastrophic spring day; the underworld of the Oriental quarter was never able fully to overcome the cleansing effect of the fire and earthquake, and very few of the opium resorts and slave cribs were rebuilt. But unlike Chinatown and its own Biblical prototypes, the Barbary Coast immediately rose, phoenix-like, from its ashes.

Dalessandro also offers up a loving, tender portrait of Enrico Caruso, the brilliant Italian tenor who visits San Francsico for a performance just before the quake. This Caruso is a sweet, cheerful, down-to-earth Neapolitan who just might have been the world's most famous person at that time. In Dalessandro's depiction, you can't help falling in love with the man. [Thanks for that one too, James!!]

Italians were a very important part of San Francisco at that time, although they held little power. My most long lasting image of that Disaster was AP Giannini, the then proprietor of the "Bank of Italy" [Predecessor of The Bank of America], not missing a beat, and setting up his burned out bank on the street, on a plank balanced on two barrels, lending money to needy Italians, based only on their need and signature!!!!

Some tried to ignore the  disaster, like actor John Barrymore, who put on his white tails and strolled to a Union Square club for a brandy. Others were utterly absorbed by it, like the San Francisco Call reporter who dashed around the crumbling city in a frenzy, agog at the opportunity to "record the end of the world." And yet others went berserk, like the drunk prostitutes and pimps who staged an orgy on the steps of the U.S. Mint, apparently deciding to meet the world's end "in the style to which they were accustomed.

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was one of the great natural disasters in American history. The quake and ensuing fire left a city known as the "Paris of the West" in ruins. Then human venality made things worse. Looters were out in full force, picking damaged businesses clean.

Federal troops given license to shoot and kill the thieves fired on many people who were simply trying to save their own property. And members of the security force also joined in the looting. After the smoke cleared, politicians who had been the target of a massive corruption investigation before the disaster were left in power -- and painted a false picture for the world. They declared that fewer than 500 people had died, a figure that is now believed to be less than 10 percent of the actual toll.

Five years ago "1906" was a planned novel. When Titanic hit, his manager suggested he write a treatment for film and get out and pitch it. They sold it in 24 hours to Warner Bros. for six-figures who purchased it for Baltimore/Spring Creek Productions run by director Barry Levinson and Paula Weinstein. Other buyers bidding for the property included Steven Spielberg's company Dreamworks SKG.
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A NOVEL CONCEPT

Local author blurs fact and fiction in book about 1906 earthquake.

San Francisco Examiner
By Bill Picture
June 1, 2004

The 8.3 magnitude earthquake that rocked San Francisco in the early morning hours of April 18, 1906 serves as the historical backdrop for an intriguing web of lies, corruption and cover-ups in James Dalessandro's latest book, "1906.

"The Bay Area author uses little-known historical facts that have been buried beneath the legend of the deadly earthquake and obfuscated by the passage of time to create a handful of composite characters who, in turn, recount actual events that happened at City Hall in the days leading up to the minute-long shaker and the ensuing fires that nearly finished off San Francisco.

Dalessandro's "1906" centers around a corruption scandal, one of the biggest in American history, that involved then-mayor Eugene Schmitz. The book opens on April 15, two days before Schmitz was indicted, and ends just a few hours after the last fire burned out on April 22.

"I spent seven years researching this book," says Dalessandro, "and I probably studied thousands of documents. And I just kept peeling back layer after layer after layer. The challenge was figuring out how the pieces all fit together, you know, seeing the bigger picture."

In addition to shady political goings-on, Dalessandro happened upon colorful eyewitness accounts of the hours and days following the quake, many of which he incorporated into the story.

"There's (a story) about some Italian Americans using wine-soaked rags to beat out fires because there wasn't any water and people in the Mission District unhinging the doors in their homes to use as fire shields. I mean, these stories are just amazing."

Dalessandro believes it's no coincidence that so few people are familiar with the historical facts upon which 1906 is based, even though the information is actually a matter of public record.

"It was the cover-up to end all cover-ups," he explains. "For instance, the number of dead was officially listed at 478. More people than that died in Chinatown alone. We now know the number is closer to 6,000. Politicians buried the truth because they were afraid (that) people and businesses wouldn't return to San Francisco if they knew what really happened."

The author says he chose to present the information he collected in a fact-based fiction form because he felt it would be easier for readers to digest and more entertaining within the context of a good story."Details bore people," he explains. "But if you tell a good story, people will listen.

But by putting a human face on it, it connected with people on a level that statistics couldn't."So far, Dalessandro's hunch has been right. Not only has the first edition of "1906," which was released last month, already nearly sold out, but Warner Brothers has purchased the film rights to the book and Dalessandro is currently working with an all-star filmmaking team to produce a feature-length documentary on the subject, which they plan to release on the 100th anniversary of the earthquake.

"What can I say?" he says. "People love a good story. And this may be the best story ever."

1906: A Novel  By James Dalessandro

Visit www.1906earthquake.com for more information on 1906: A Novel (Chronicle Books; $24.95) and its author and to watch a three-minute of Dalessandro's upcoming documentary.

San Francisco Examiner: A novel concept
http://www.sfexaminer.com/article/
index.cfm/i/060104a_1906

James Dalessandro is a veteran screenwriter who returned to his first love, fiction, out of frustration with Hollywood. He considers his first novel, Bohemian Heart, to be a paen to one of his other great loves, San Francisco. He uses the city's history and colorful characters as the settings for his novels. Citizen Jane, a true crime story, is set in Marin County, and relates the story of Jane Alexander, a quiet housewife, who spent 13 years tracking down a murderer, and later founded Citizens Against Homicide to find justice for the families of murder victims. And a prequel to Bohemian Heart, entitled "1906", about the San Francisco earthquake and similar issues, is in the works.