Frisco

Set during the Great Depression, Frisco tells the story of Nick Benson and Clarisa McMahon, whose relationship is torn apart when financial hardship forces them to take separate paths. Nick has a newly-minted degree in journalism, however newspaper jobs are scarce. To help support his family, he joins the crew of a freighter bound for the Far East. Clarisa, the daughter of an Irish immigrant, is studying to become a teacher, and she, too, must put her plans aside when her father's printing business no longer sustains them. Inexperienced but intelligent and determined, she lands a job at the Waterfront Employers Association working for Roger Farnsworth, a young executive who wages a relentless campaign to win her affection. In tracing their lives, author Daniel Bacon takes us from the jazz clubs of the Barbary Coast to the streets of old Shanghai to a smoky Mission District tavern that becomes the center of a secret rebellion. When Nick returns to San Francisco, he finds work as a longshoreman and is recruited to write for a union newspaper. During the following months, a violent strike erupts on the waterfront, placing Nick and Clarisa on opposite sides of a bloody conflict. Based on actual events, the conflict climaxes when every union in San Francisco goes on strike, shutting down the entire city for four dramatic days. In the midst of this clash, Nick and Clarisa find their loyalties shifting as they struggle to put their relationship back together.