Tortoise Crossing--expect long delays by Mike Murphy

Tortoise Crossing--expect long delays by Mike Murphy

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake changed-and ended-many Bay Area lives. There were heroes, there were villains, and there were many people shaken (at first, literally) to the core. A huge event like that can throw lives together in startling ways, and that's the subject of my novel, Aftershock.

I wrote the story because I lived in San Francisco at the time of the quake, and had quake-related experiences with people who became models for certain aspects of the main characters. Of course, San Francisco itself is a rich setting for fiction-the disaster circumstances called out to be made into a coherent novel.

The earthquake and its damages are a frame for the emotional damage of the three primary characters. One is a blithe joker who is insecure in his art, one a respected businesswoman who feels lost to her father, and one a military veteran whose alcoholism lost him to his family and himself. Those all sound like downers, but the interplay between these characters-characters who never would have come together in these ways without the quake-is often hilarious. Except when it's not. There's a lot of San Francisco in the book, including the city's beauties, and how the AIDS crisis affects a secondary character and thus the protagonist. Even the Bronte sisters get their moments.