Devilseed — Frank Yerby

Gold was what lured them to San Francisco, and gold is what motivated their lives and loves. Miners dug it. Bankers stacked it, and the glittering bordellos of the day made what they could of it from the eager, hot-blooded men who flocked to sample their wares. And it was there, in the perfumed and highly charged atmosphere, that many a girl began her climb to riches and respectability.

When Mireille Duclos first sails into San Francisco she is fifteen years old, has a catlike grace, a doelike innocence, her mother's lover by her side, and not a penny of her own to her name. In her future are more dramas and adventures than she has years.