The Nature of Things

Frog Music by Emma Donoghue My rating: 3 of 5 stars This story is based on an actual event that happened in San Francisco in the summer of 1876 - the never-solved murder of a young cross-dressing frog hunter named Jenny Bonnet. Emma Donaghue takes the bare bones of that case and fleshes it out to detail an interesting and plausible tale of just how and why this murder happened and who may have been responsible. That summer in San Francisco was a terrible time. The city was in the grip of a record-breaking heat wave, but its misery was increased exponentially by a smallpox epidemic which was terrifying the populace and making them wary of interacting with each other. We meet Blanche Beunon, French immigrant, a burlesque dancer and whore who was the support of herself and her two "fancy men," Arthur and Ernest. All three had formerly been performers in the circus in France, but after Arthur, who was a trapeze artist, had a fall which injured his back, they all came to America....