The Ordeals of Elly Robin by P.D. Quaver is a coming-of-age story, that begins with Elly surviving the San Francisco Earthquake. Her travels (and ordeals) take her (and us!) from vaudeville stages, to hobo jungles, to the gilded palaces of the rich; she will witness not just the Great San Francisco Earthquake, but the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the virtual slavery of young immigrants in a Chicago sweatshop, and the horrors of World War One; Zelig-like she will encounter the likes of Emma Goldman, Louis Armstrong, Fatty Arbuckle, and George Gershwin.