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Local author Susan Meissner believes historical fiction can be immersive: “It has the unique quality of being able to transport a reader back into time.”
Her new novel, “The Nature of Fragile Things,” does that through a depiction of the the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and its ramifications.
“A well-written nonfiction can do that as well, but I find nonfiction to be largely detail-driven, and fiction is all about the human element,” she said. “Nonfiction can explain the details of a historical event and even tell you what it was like to live through it, but only a novel can let you feel what it was like.
Meissner (
The Last Year of the War) spins an exceptional story about an Irish immigrant who lands in San Francisco shortly before the 1906 earthquake. After spending two years in New York City, Sophie Whalen, 20, answers a newspaper ad from widower Martin Hocking of San Francisco, who is seeking a wife for him and a mother for his daughter. Sophie falls head over heels for Martin’s five-year-old daughter, Kat, having given up having a child of her own, and looks forward to developing a bond with her new husband. But Sophie learns that all is not as it seems when a pregnant woman named Belinda Bigelow shows up on her doorstep hours before the earthquake, looking for her husband, James, who told Belinda he had business with Martin. Upon seeing a picture of Martin, Belinda recognizes him as James. This leads the two women to go through Martin’s papers, and they deduce he’d married both of them under different names. Unexpected and masterfully crafted twists and turns abound afte