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One of the greatest pleasures reading offers is that wonderful feeling of being transported into another time; another world that you can’t wait to get back to. Even better is when that feeling comes on you unexpectedly, and you’re hooked by page ten—totally lost to the ride. Kathleen Knowles’ accomplished debut, Awake Unto Me, is just such a wonderful time machine. 

Kerry O’Shea is a rough and tumble denizen of the unsavory Barbary Coast, daughter of a whore and a father who “crimps” (or shanghais) unwary sailors for a living. Beth Hammond is a respectable shopkeeper’s daughter on the better side of the tracks. They do, however, have Dr. Addison Grant in common. Grant and O’Shea’s father ran a lucrative card sharping scam for a while, putting Grant through medical school. Grant, in turn, promises to take care of Kerry should something happen to her father—and it does. Beth turns to nursing, her supervising doctor being Dr. Grant. Circumstances force the girls to share a room in Dr. Grant’s house, and of course, love blooms between them.

Knowles, a San Francisco resident, gives Awake Unto Me a wonderful sense of place—richly detailed and immensely transportative. But place means nothing without people, and Knowles is just as talented at creating characters. Her Kerry O’Shea is tough, vulnerable, tenacious and loving. Cheeky and determined, she gets what she wants—from a cook’s job (unheard of for a woman) in a swanky hotel to the love of Beth Hammond.

And she certainly has some obstacles to overcome there. Beth is a dedicated nurse with an incident in her past that has prevented her sexual self from developing. However, she works hard to overcome her difficulties so she may fully embrace her relationship with Kerry. The mostly welcoming space in Dr. Grant’s household allows the women this freedom. I say ‘mostly’ because of Dr. Grant’s disapproving wife, Laura, who throws some interesting hurdles in their way. Grant, however, is a forward-thinking man. He has an inkling of what is going on with Kerry and Beth and, though he doesn’t understand it, he refuses to stand in the way of their happiness.

Knowles’ prose is direct and to-the-point, nothing wasted or off target, which is why her characters are so fully fleshed. The smallest details emphasize a trait or expose a layer, and those details are well-chosen indeed. Awake Unto Me is a family album snapshot of two women standing in front of a middle-class Victorian house, close to each other (but not too close), wearing secret smiles that both expose and mask their true relationship to each other. Smiles of satisfaction and pride in achieving the goals they set for themselves. Like pioneers.

Real pioneers.

Reviewed by Jerry Wheeler