A mail-order husband that turned out to be perfect until one morning a knock at the door shattered Sophie’s life.

Actually there are two more women whose lives are shattered by Sophie’s husband.

THE NATURE OF FRAGILE THINGS takes us into the lives of Sophie, Belinda, Candace, and six-year-old Kat.

Each woman has a different story, but Martin, Sophie’s husband, is at the center of all of them.

This book was about life’s choices, the resilience of women, the beauty of friendship, the support women give each other, and an added bit of mystery.

You will wonder where it is heading in the beginning, and it heads to another marvelous book by Susan Meissner.

Ms. Meissner wove the story line around her well-researched account of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake which added to the tension and beauty of this book. 5/5

This book was given to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

?Although I didn’t expect to like THE NATURE OF FRAGILE THINGS, I did. This is historical fiction that deals with the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. But what I heard about the fiction built around it sounded implausible to me. Maybe some parts of it are, but I liked the story.

Sophie, an Irish 18-year-old who has been in New York for about three years, answers an advertisement from Martin for a mail-order bride. She wants to escape poverty; he claims that he wants to appear respectable. Sophie goes to San Francisco, and they immediately marry, even before going to his home there and meeting his six-year-old daughter, Katherine (Kat).

Martin never acts like a proper husband, but Sophie is not concerned. It does bother her, though, that he never acts like a proper father to Kat, who she soon comes to love.

When a pregnant woman appears on her doorstep one day while her husband is gone, Sophie learns the truth about Martin. He is guilty of far more than infidelity. And she will come to suspect even more. But, first, the earthquake.

Sounds like an old-fashioned soap opera. That’s why I was, at first, turned off to this book. But, as with modern-day soap operas, you may get caught up in this story in spite of yourself.

The book takes a while to get all the characters into place & then there are many surprises & turns that draw you into the narrative & the harrowing events of our heroine/protagonist. I thought the writing was excellent & the book was well-researched. Not everyone in our book Club enjoyed it as much as I did because of some dark topics