But it's Blanche and Jenny who hold our attention. Donoghue brilliantly conjures the chaos of a boomtown in the grip of both a heat wave and a smallpox epidemic her cast of colorful lowlifes includes the freeloading Arthur and his sycophantic best friend, Ernest. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue’s lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other.

In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. It’s the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny’s murderer to justice - if he doesn’t track her down first. The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead. Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. From the author of the worldwide bestseller Room: “Her greatest achievement yet…Emma Donoghue shows more than range with Frog Music - she shows genius.”- Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life.

Frog music book