Post the Panama-Pacific

a tale of two cities

As connected by the fate of a family’s once magnificent Victorian home, Post the Panama-Pacific intertwines a mystery through two juxtaposed tales, one set amidst the dynamism of Progressive Era San Francisco, against the backdrop of 1915’s Panama-Pacific Exposition, the last and greatest of the Beaux-Arts international expositions, and a second set in a moribund future some thirty years from the present.  Remaining together or drifting apart, in both stories, amidst the challenges of their times, multiethnic pairings of entrepreneurial characters struggle to find their place in the world.  As the consequences of untimely death, secrets, and discoveries play out, a forgotten past proves capable of exerting its influence more than a century on.  Employing real events and borrowing upon real personalities, the past story gently inserts its characters into 1915 San Francisco’s vast suspension of reality amidst the worldwide events which turned the 20^th century tragic.  Without pausing in the present, the future story describes a dystopian San Francisco, now the product of a self-perpetuating juggernaut of progressive policy incapable of defining an ultimate destination, a vast suspension of reality in its own right.