Barbara Francis

If This Be Forgetting: a Story of Old Sacremento Barbara Francis

On the eve of her wedding to Clay Carpenter, MaryAnn Poole's world collapses when she is told, "That boy you're fixin' t'marry could be your half-brother." Fearing she might be pregnant, she leaves her parents' mansion to seek anonymity in Sacramento's harsh Riverfront District. She obtains work in a dismal mercantile on Front Street. The year is 1901, when women living alone are looked upon with suspicion. Two years later she is brutally molested by a 'river man'. The experience and the man's threat, "I'll come back and kill you," drive her into a platonic marriage with her employer's paraplegic son, Henry Collins. As the words 'incest' and 'could be your brother' give her no peace, she accepts her unhappiness as God's punishment for her continuing dreams of Clay. In a desperate effort to save her marriage, she talks Henry into taking her to San Francisco at the time of the 1906 earthquake. Plagued with guilt, MaryAnn returns to Sacramento determined to make the mercantile into a monument to Henry. A dinner party unexpectedly brings Clay and MaryAnn together as guests. He is with his fiance. She, by choice, is alone. Will this chance meeting allow Clay and MaryAnn to find each other again?