My book club chose The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner as our April selection. This twisting novel full of secrets and deceptions features a point in time that triggers all things hidden to come to light. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a devastating natural disaster that is hard to wrap a mind around. The setting had to be daunting — the details that needed to be searched through and chosen to best depict the magnitude of the event. Meissner did a great job of putting the reader in the middle of the terror of the first moments and the determination needed to survive and rebuild. If the novel was just about the earthquake, Meissner would have done a creditable job. However, she weaves a story of three very different women brought together in unbelievable circumstances. And I’m, not talking about the earthquake. The first person, present tense narrator ( which is done extremely well) is Sophie Whalen, a recent immigrant from Ireland who comes to California for a new start. She seems to get everything she dreamed of until the night before the quake. As one of our members said, the book gets exciting from that point! I don’t want to share any spoilers — the book is rich in surprises you don’t see coming — so I’ll just say that the tangled stories of the three women kept me furiously turning the pages. There are themes of female friendships, mother love, and incomplete justice. I can’t recommend this book enough! Enjoy the historical context, the intertwining mystery, and the thought-provoking storyline. I look forward to our discussion of this book — it will definitely make for a great conversation.
Highly Recommended.
Great for Book Clubs.
Audience: Adults.
(I purchased the ebook from Amazon. All opinions expressed are mine alone.)
April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed.
Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so desperate to get out of a New York tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin’s silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin’s odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn’t right.
Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved.
The fates of these three women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear.
From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War and As Bright as Heaven comes a gripping novel about the bonds of friendship and mother love, and the power of female solidarity.
Susan Meissner is the USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction with more than three-quarters of a million books in print in eighteen languages. Her novels include The Nature of Fragile Things, starred review Publishers Weekly; The Last Year of the War, a Library Reads and Real Simple top pick; As Bright as Heaven, starred review from Library Journal; Secrets of a Charmed Life, a 2015 Goodreads Choice award finalist; and A Fall of Marigolds, named to Booklist’s Top Ten women’s fiction titles for 2014. She is also RITA finalist and Christy Award and Carol Award winner. A California native, she attended Point Loma Nazarene University and is also a writing workshop volunteer for Words Alive, a San Diego non-profit dedicated to helping at-risk youth foster a love for reading and writing.
Visit Susan at her website: https://susanmeissnerauthor.com/ and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/susanmeissnerauthor/ on Twitter at @SusanMeissner or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/susan.meissner
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