Esther becomes increasingly involved in efforts to resist eminent domain.
Ruth, the natural lead of the group, gets pregnant. Deep thoughts about equality and racial justice won’t be necessary just make sure the young women stay focused on music. A manager has persuaded Vivian that girl groups are on the rise, that they have a shot at stardom. You see any of that in San Francisco?” Instead, she’s pinned her hopes on her three daughters, Chloe, Ruth, and Esther, who form a vocal trio, the Salvations, that draws crowds at a Fillmore supper club. “Don’t get me started on the lynchings,” she remembers, “so many at one time, my mama wept every time my daddy left the house. Her relief at being out of the South is so intense that she is quick to shut down disruptive talk of civil rights. The load-bearing beam for much of that anxiety is Vivian, a widow who moved to San Francisco from Louisiana to escape the Klan and Jim Crow.
Rather, it goes deep into the early moments of the change and deftly captures the anxiety it created. Sexton’s novel isn’t about those results-it doesn’t tunnel into the future. At the time, the predominantly Black neighborhood was targeted for redevelopment, thanks to debatable claims of blight within the next three decades, the neighborhood would be transformed and its residents dispersed.
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s sprightly, emotionally savvy third novel, On the Rooftop, is set in 1953 in San Francisco’s Fillmore district.
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