A dazzling novel of one of America's most celebrated photographers, Dorothea Lange,
exploring the wild years in San Francisco that awakened her career-defining grit, compassion, and daring.
"Illuminative."
MS. Magazine
New York Times
Best of Summer 2021
Oprah's Best
Historical Fiction of 2021
"Rich and rewarding."
Publishers Weekly
“To take a truly good picture you need to learn to see, not just look.”
In 1918, a young and bright-eyed Dorothea Lange arrives in San Francisco, where a disaster kick-starts a new life. Her friendship with Caroline Lee, a vivacious, straight-talking Chinese American with a complicated past, gives Dorothea entrée into Monkey Block, an artists' colony and the bohemian heart of the city. Dazzled by Caroline and her friends, Dorothea is catapulted into a heady new world of freedom, art, and politics. She also finds herself unexpectedly falling in love with the brilliant but troubled painter Maynard Dixon. Dorothea and Caroline eventually create a flourishing portrait studio, but a devastating betrayal pushes their friendship to the breaking point and alters the course of their lives.
The Bohemians captures a glittering and gritty 1920s San Francisco, with a cast of unforgettable characters, including cameos from such legendary figures as Mabel Dodge Luhan, Frida Kahlo, Ansel Adams, and D.H. Lawrence. A vivid and absorbing portrait of the past, it is also eerily resonant with contemporary themes, as anti-immigration sentiment, corrupt politicians, and a devastating pandemic bring tumult to the city—and the gift of friendship and the possibility of self-invention persist against the ferocious pull of history.
As Dorothea sheds her innocence, her purpose is awakened and she grows into the artist who would create pictures—like her iconic Depression-era photograph, Migrant Mother—that would break the hearts and open the eyes of a nation.
About The Bohemians
new york times best of summer 2021
oprah's best historical fiction of 2021 pick
Indiebound bestseller
INSIDE THE BOHEMIANS
ideas and inspirations behind the book
THE BOHEMIANS
A Pictorial Imagining
Dorothea Lange once famously said, "art is an act of total attention." Jasmin Darznik's breathtaking novel THE BOHEMIANS accomplishes that and more. Not only did it have me riveted from start to finish, through her words, history powerfully speaks to the present moment.
A powerful novel about a woman who shuns convention to follow her passion.
Darznik, with a keen eye to history, weaves real artists and historic events into an engaging story of struggle and success. Though the book is set more than 100 years ago, it feels powerfully contemporary: Men return from the battlefields of World War I to reclaim their jobs and positions in society. The Spanish flu arrives on the West Coast, forcing businesses to fold and people to quarantine. Politicians rail against foreigners; raids take place across the city. Strong, well-portrayed female characters propel this intriguing tale.
In her riveting and resonant new novel, Jasmin Darznik captures San Francisco’s heyday through the eyes of one of its most iconic residents. By exploring how Dorothea Lange witnessed her troubled and momentous times, Darznik speaks directly to our own.
Author of the secrets we kept
praise for the bohemians
You’ll never look at a Dorothea Lange photograph the same way after reading Darznik’s compelling portrait of the trailblazer who carved a glorious path through 1920s San Francisco. Darznik doesn’t flinch when confronting the parallels to today, whether racism or anti-immigrant sentiment, yet her impeccable research grounds the story firmly in the heyday of the Jazz Age. A superb read.
The Bohemians succeeds on every level. Darznik has created an arresting portrait of two women set before an illuminating background. [Dorothea] Lange would be proud.
A beautiful literary portrait of the one and only Dorothea Lange. Jasmin Darznik expertly delivers in this an intriguing glimpse into the woman behind those unforgettable photographs of the Great Depression’s and their impact on humanity. Highly readable and utterly relevant to our times. I was transported.
bestselling Author of
the lions of fifth avenue
The nature of fragile things
Historical fiction readers will treasure this engaging story peppered with notable figures rom Lange’s circle of friends. . .Darznik deftly depicts Lange’s transformation into a renowned photographer, as well as the blatant prejudice that Caroline encounters because of her Chinese lineage.
The Bohemians succeeds on every level. Darznik has created an arresting portrait of two women set before an illuminating background. [Dorothea] Lange would be proud.
Booklist
CONTINUE READING
Spring came early in 1906, chilly and damp. For months the Chinatown papers had been printing detailed predictions about the chaos and calamity to come. It would be a time of wild reversals, the likes of which descended on the world only every sixty years. The residents of Tangrenbu, San Francisco’s Chinese quarter, did not doubt the dire predictions or the futility of preparing for what was to come.
One night in the first week of April, Donaldina Cameron—or Lo Mo, “Old Mother,” as she was known to the girls of 920 Sacramento Street, or “the White Devil” to those irked or inconvenienced by her work—rescued five girls from a brothel on Jackson Street.
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"It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco."
-Oscar Wilde
Disappear Into. . .
georges Barbier
"When I first arrived in May of 1918, the city belonged to the bohemians, which is to say to the artists, poets, and writers—and the vast, varied company they attracted. You saw them everywhere, but the cafés, bakeries, restaurants, and pubs of North Beach, the small Italian village on Telegraph Hill, were bursting with them. They’d all come from somewhere else, and they all had a story to tell. That was another thing about San Francisco: Every time you met someone, it was like stepping into a story just as they were making it up."
The Bohemians
monkey block in the 1930s
city of paris department store
women of the 1920s
market street
"I was walking past the City of Paris after work in my old mackintosh when I caught my reflection in the store window. There it was, plain as day: That coat made me invisible. . .
"What really struck me was that with my bobbed hair and my coat turned up at the collar, I looked almost like a boy. Something was missing, though, and all at once I knew what. I marched into the men’s department and bought myself a hat. More specifically, a fedora. "
The Bohemians
the cliff house
market street
Travel down Market Street in 1906
Chinatown
San Francisco's Chinatown is the oldest in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese came to the country in the 1800s and were instrumental in building America's railroads and other infrastructure. After the Gold Rush, many settled in San Francisco, where they were confined, as a matter of law, to this district. Chinatown was completely destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fires. These photographs show it as it was in the 1920s, the time period in which The Bohemians takes place and after it had been rebuilt to serve, in part, as a tourist attraction.
A new city can change you, in the way a friend can change you, and there are moments in life where both happen at once. San Francisco was such a point of intersection for Dorothea Lange.
The Bohemians focuses on a time when she wasn’t yet an icon, but rather a young woman finding her way forward through life. In writing it, I wanted to think about what had made her who she became. I wanted to explore the beginnings of her career, her start as a photographer at a time when photography wasn’t commonly thought of as art or documentary. I wanted to trace how her training as a high-society portrait photographer prepared her for what came next: her life’s work documenting ordinary and often unseen people. And I wanted to explore the ways that San Francisco, and California more broadly, transformed her sense of herself as both a woman and a photographer.
-dorothea lange
“I found myself in San Francisco.”
Read my
Author's note
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Dorothea Lange landed in San Francisco in 1918. The people she met there-Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Consuelo Kanaga-left life-long impressions on her. Get to know the larger-than-life personalities behind the novel's characters.
the real bohemians
meet the full cast
prev |
next
Dorothea Lange landed in San Francisco in 1918. The people she met there-Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Consuelo Kanaga-left life-long impressions on her. Get to know the larger-than-life personalities behind the novel's characters.
the real bohemians
meet the full cast
"I let my hands drop to my sides and looked at my reflection more closely. The dress was a low-necked cocktail gown, robin’s egg blue. Voluptuous, rich, intoxicating. Silk—it had to be. The dress was a bit loose in the chest and I’d never worn anything like it, not by a mile. Not by ten miles. But it was very beautiful and, anyway, didn’t I want a change? Wasn’t that the point of leaving home in the first place?"
The Bohemians
“You’ll never look at a Dorothea Lange photograph the same way after reading Darznik’s compelling portrait of the trailblazer who carved a glorious path through 1920s San Francisco. Darznik doesn’t flinch when confronting the parallels to today, whether racism or anti-immigrant sentiment, yet her impeccable research grounds the story firmly in the heyday of the Jazz Age. A superb read.”
Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue
