The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner

The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meissner – 384 pages

ARC from Berkley and Netgalley for an honest review 

Book Blurb:

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.

My Review: 4.5 stars

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The Nature of Fragile Things may just be my favorite Susan Meissner book to date. I’ve read all of her compelling and entertaining books, so that says a lot! In this one, she brought the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 alive and how it not only devastated the entire city, but how it brought some unlikely women together. 

I loved that this started out with a mail-order bride situation. That concept still amazes me – it’s akin to today’s “swipe right” online dating that would be bound by law when they meet in person. The circumstances around Sophie’s arrival and quick marriage to Martin leaves much to the imagination, however, like all good stories, the answers are unraveled slowly but surely. 

Meissner has a knack for bringing the surroundings of her character’s to life and this one is no exception. The ash in the air,  the smells, the hunger and the ever-present sense of death jumped off the page. Sophie found her strength during this time as she was responsible for her self-imposed mute step-daughter, an unlikely new friend and a newborn infant. Together they put together the mysterious puzzle of Martin and found a way to move forward. There were some great twists that I didn’t see coming which were amplified by the sections in the book that featured Sophie being interviewed by a detective. 

This book covered an American natural disaster that I knew nothing about before reading this. I learned in the author’s note that by today’s standards, this earthquake would’ve been rated as a 7.9 on the Richter scale. Of course, the book focuses on much more than the earthquake – motherhood, friendship, honesty and love are at the heart of the story. 

Quotes I liked:

When people are thrown into an abyss and together find their way out of it, they are not the same people. They are bound to each other ever after, linked together at the core of who they are because it was together that they escaped a terrible fate.”

“The fireman can access no water. It is nearly laughable that as I hear these words, we are marching west on a peninsula that is surrounded on three sides by the sea. There is water in every direction but one, but no way of getting it to the streets.”