In October, I did an interview with NPR's legendary producer, Nikki Silva. I'm hoping to make the final cut, but it was exciting either way! Silva suggested I update the blog. I'd been re-working the graphic novel significantly, with some epistolary pages penned by the Jesuit-schooled Mei, who becomes Ah Toy's accountant in San Francisco. Here are some of the (raw) sketches from Mei's letter to the revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, who, along with his wife Anita, was at that time an object of global fascination and admiration:
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| (In real life, Garibaldi is said to have learned all of his considerable horsemanship late in life, and only from his teenaged gaucho wife, who had been abandoned by her first husband.) |
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| ...And in real life, Anita died at Garibaldi's side, in flight from the armies supporting Pope Pius IX. |
And thus Mei, washed ashore on Los Farallones, is retrieved by one of the egg poachers. She will soon be brought to Ah Toy's wretched salon, where she will exercise her considerable moral suasion on the hopelessly mercenary Ah Toy. Wretched Greed vs. Morality - in 1850's San Francisco, as today, no one knows which will prevail. But don't be fooled by her placid, bookish demeanor, Mei's a true believer, and in her own patient way, a real fighter. 