Historical fiction that reads with the urgency and suspense of a thriller.” (Lauren Willig, New York Times best-selling author of The Summer Country) “In the ashes of San Francisco's greatest tragedy, one remarkable woman finds love, friendship, and the means to rebuild. These fascinating characters' hidden pasts and dark secrets collide, entwine, and explode - and that's before the earthquake hits.' (Greer Macallister, author of The Magician's Lie and The Arctic Fury) “A riveting tale set in 1906 San Francisco. “A mysterious web of lies, love, and loss that accelerates toward the inevitable: the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906.' (Kristin Harmel, author of The Book of Lost Names) 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.įrom 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. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events.

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. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. 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. Lives are lost, lives are shattered, but some rise from the ashes forever changed. April 18, 1906: A massive earthquake rocks San Francisco just before daybreak, igniting a devouring inferno.

The nature of fragile things book