(6/4/2024)
Meredith Jaeger’s newest book, The Incorrigibles, is my favorite of her novels to date! It's a dual timeline historical fiction set in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood in 1890 and in 1972 as the neighborhood fights against urban renewal. Deeply researched and timelessly relevant, it touches on injustice, oppression and housing insecurity, but is also a page-turning story of hope, courage and strong women who rebel against what society expects of them. I was immediately drawn into the characters and wanted to know what would happen next in their lives, but also enjoyed how the book peeled back the layers of time in a specific place. Even though the two timelines are in the past, everything these women and the communities they find along the way struggled with remain very relevant today. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes historical fiction, strong female characters, or well-researched histories of San Francisco in particular, but really any urban city.