Book Review: The Nature of Fragile Things

Synopsis:

The year is 1905 and Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant living in New York City. But she’s not really living . . . the conditions in which she finds herself are horrific. In fact, she is so anxious to escape the Lower Manhattan tenement that she shares with other young women, she answers an ad agreeing to be a mail-order bride. She will travel to San Francisco, and marry a man she has never met and knows virtually nothing about.

But widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops a deep affection for and desire to care for Kat, Martin’s five-year-old daughter who stopped speaking after her mother’s death from consumption. Martin’s odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn’t right, but she tolerates it for Kat’s sake.

Until an early-spring evening, that is. A strange woman at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers Martin’s hidden ties to three other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in Arizona, grieving the loss of everything she once loved. And the third? Dead.

The ways in which the fates of three women are intertwined are revealed on the eve of the devastating 1906 earthquake. Suddenly, they are thrust together on a perilous journey that tests their resiliency, resolve, and belief that love really can overcome fear.

The Nature of Fragile Things is an exploration of the bonds of female friendship and solidarity, and the power of maternal love.

Review:

Susan Meissner has penned 20 novels, many of which are set against the backdrop of significant historical events and have earned starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and BookList. A California native, she lived in Minnesota, where she was the managing editor of a weekly newspaper, England, and Germany, before returning to her hometown, San Diego. She enjoys teaching workshops on writing, and spending time with her husband and four grown children.

The Nature of Fragile Things opens with the transcript of Sophie Whalen Hocking being interviewed by Ambrose Logan, a U.S. Marshall, on November 6, 1906. At the outset, Meissner reveals that Sophie married Martin Hocking on March 10, 1905, and reported him missing six weeks after the catastrophic April 18, 1906, San Francisco earthquake. From there, the story is related via Sophie’s first-person narrative, which is interrupted occasionally by additional excerpts of the interview. The technique is highly effective, instantly pulling readers into a mystery concerning Sophie and Martin. Sophie’s narration opens in March 1905 — on the very day she arrives in San Francisco from New York City and is met at the ferry by Martin — and proceeds in a linear fashion as the timeline gradually catches up to the date of the interview and the two time periods merge.

Sophie had never met or spoken with Martin when she agreed to move to San Francisco, marry him, and care for Kat, the little girl who has barely spoken since losing her mother, Candace. Martin offers Sophie the chance to have what she has always wanted — a stable home and a child to love. Martin is strikingly handsome, with piercing eyes with which he seems to peer into Sophie’s very soul. She has been gazing at the picture he sent her and is relieved when she disembarks from the ferry and finds him waiting for her. He indeed looks just like his picture and smiles readily when he spots her. From there, they immediately proceed to City Hall where they are married in a quick, no-frills ceremony although Martin does grant Sophie’s request that they purchase two photographs commemorating the occasion — one for Sophie’s mother back in Ireland and one to keep. They then go directly to the boarding house where Martin and Kat have been staying. There, Sophie meets Kat for the first time and the three of them continue on to the home Martin has purchased on Polk Street, a few blocks from Russian Hill. Sophie is delighted to see that it is large, comfortably furnished, and she has her own room. She made clear to Martin that the marriage would not be consummated until the two of them developed affection for each other. It was a term of their agreement to which Martin readily acceded. After all, his purpose in advertising for a wife was to provide a new mother for his daughter and be able to project the image of a successful businessman, rather than “a pathetic widower and father.” Martin explained that he worked for a life insurance company and traveled extensively on business. Sophie assumed that he didn’t seek out a romantic relationship because of his grief over losing Candace and desire to have “companionship and hot meals and a clean house but not romance. Not love.”

Sophie settles into her new home and quickly finds herself caring deeply for Kat. While Martin travels, they occupy themselves with walks around the city and gardening, and Kat begins to speak. At first, she utters only an occasional word, just above a whisper. But as the months pass, Sophie realizes how bright and intuitive Kat is, as she begins to speak full sentences, and determines, with Martin’s consent, to tutor her at home rather than send her to school. Sophie is gradually attracted to Martin and he does not rebuff her suggestion that they share a bed. But their physical relationship is devoid of intimacy — Martin does not even kiss Sophie. He remains aloof and standoffish, but Sophie is steadfastly convinced that he is wounded inside. He shows no warmth or tenderness to Kat, either. “All of this is enough, I tell myself, over and over,” Sophie confesses.

As much as Sophie loves Kat and is thankful to be able to mother her — because, as she notes, she will never be able to give birth to a child — she is troubled by Martin’s secretive behavior. For instance, he keeps the drawers of his desk locked securely and when Sophie questions him, explaining that she attempted to look in the desk for a postage stamp and ink, he merely tells her to purchase whatever she needs from the stationer using the money he provides her to run the household. And one night Martin returns home and begins constructing a storage area in the boiler room, claiming that he has gone into business selling hair tonic with Candace’s cousin, Belinda. He warns Sophie not to touch the bottles he stores there. “The tonic is a bit unstable at first, so the bottles mustn’t be moved or jostled after I’ve placed them in the boiler room or the sure will be ruined. . . . The test thing you and Kat can do is to stay out of that room so that there’s no chance of the bottles being knocked over,” Martin tells Sophie.

The tension and pace of the story accelerate dramatically on one fateful night when Sophie finds a pregnant woman on the doorstep. She claims to be looking for her husband, James Bigelow, who was asked by Martin to do him a favor. But James never returned so Belinda has left the inn she owns and operates in (fictional) San Rafaela and journeyed to San Francisco in search of him after finding Martin’s address. When Sophie invites her in, and she sees Sophie and Martin’s wedding photo, the two women break into Martin’s desk . . . and form an unusual alliance that is cemented the following morning when the earthquake strikes.

I turn to face the city . . . I see the vast open fields of ash beyond the stubborn brick and stone skeletons. There was life in all those empty spaces, and now there isn’t. What was there is gone. Erased. Something else can take its place, though. Something else will. Something new. Something different than what was there before. Better maybe, stronger. But certainly not the exact same thing. This is how we make ourselves over when calamity strikes, isn’t it? I should know. ~~ Sophie in The Nature of Fragile Things

Scientists estimate that the initial earthquake would have measured 7.9 on the Richter scale. It actually consisted of two shocks in quick succession, with the second being significantly stronger than the first and lasting for forty-five seconds. (Anyone who has experienced an earthquake can attest that forty-five seconds feels like a lifetime.) It was followed by numerous aftershocks. Between the initial earthquake and the resultant fires, about five square miles of San Francisco burned to the ground over the course of three days. Gas lines and water mains burst, leaving about twenty-eight thousand buildings in ruins and rendering four hundred thousand residents homeless. More than three thousand people died. Meissner conducted extensive research in an effort to portray the earthquake and its aftermath as accurately as possible. And she succeeds in conveying the terror that Sophie, Belinda, and her other characters experience, as well as their struggle to remain together and simply survive, as well as the toll it takes on little Kat.

Meissner credibly and compassionately illustrates how, armed with the truth, their circumstances bind Sophie and Belinda together, forging a friendship born of victimization and tragedy. But they refuse to remain victims. Rather, they are strong, determined women who know their own worth and are determined to be victorious. Sophie gradually reveals the secrets she has not shared with anyone, including why she left Ireland and is so adamant about keeping Kat with her, despite the obstacles she faces. Sophie, Belinda, and Kat are empathetic and likeable, and Meissner’s story-telling prowess ensures that readers become fully invested in their futures.

Meissner portrays the choices her characters make — some morally ambiguous — and the lengths to which they go not just to survive, but to protect and secure what is theirs, and carve out the future about which they dare to dream. The story resonates emotionally, and is full of shocking twists and revelations of dark secrets that compel it forward. Through the events she depicts, Meissner examines female friendships and what cements women together as a family who, in another time and place, might have been moral enemies. She shows how each woman, in her own way, adapts to the reality of her plight and place in society, and refuses to be defined or limited by either. On display throughout the story is the depth and power of a woman to love and protect a child, even one to which she did not give birth, and Meissner posits how justice should be meted out — and by whom — making the book an excellent selection for book clubs.

Fans of historical fiction will find themselves completely engrossed in and mesmerized by The Nature of Fragile Things. It is an expertly crafted and lovingly-told homage to the resilience of the human spirit, and the unbreakable bonds of a family formed by circumstances.

Excerpt from The Nature of Fragile Things

INTERVIEW WITH MRS. SOPHIE HOCKING
CONDUCTED BY AMBROSE LOGAN, U.S. MARSHAL
CASE NUMBER 069308

Official transcript

San Francisco, CA
November 6, 1906

QUESTION: Thank you again for coming. Could you please state your full name, age, birth date, and the city where you were born, for the record, please?

ANSWER: Sophie Whalen Hocking. August 24, 1884. Donaghadee, County Down, Ireland. I’m twenty-two.

QUESTION: Whalen is your maiden name, correct?

ANSWER: It is.

QUESTION: Thank you. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve a few questions for the record, since you and I have not had an opportunity to speak before now. You emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1903 and spent your first two years in this country in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Is that correct?

ANSWER: Yes. Nearly the first two years. Not quite that.

QUESTION: So you were nineteen when you emigrated?

ANSWER: Yes. So why is it you and I have not spoken before? Has the other detective moved away?

QUESTION: No, Detective Morris is still on the case. I was brought in only recently. I’m a U.S. marshal.

ANSWER: I don’t know what that is, sir.

QUESTION: United States marshals serve at the federal level of law enforcement rather than local.

ANSWER: Oh. So . . . so you are also a detective, then?

QUESTION: I investigate federal crimes, yes. May we continue?

ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: Can you confirm for me that you married one Martin Hocking on March 10, 1905, at the courthouse here in San Francisco?

ANSWER: Yes. Yes, I did. Do you have news of my husband? Is that why you’ve called me in?

QUESTION: Possibly. Again, for the record, did you report your husband, Martin Hocking, missing six weeks after the earthquake that occurred on April 18 of this year?

ANSWER: I did, yes.

QUESTION: Can you tell me why you waited six weeks to notify the police that your husband was missing?

ANSWER: He travels for his job. I didn’t know for sure he was missing at first.

QUESTION: You’ve stated previously you fled your home on Polk Street with your stepdaughter, Katharine Hocking, in the minutes following the earthquake. Is that correct?

ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: And the house on Polk Street was still standing when you left?

ANSWER: It . . . everything was broken and shattered inside, and the chimney had fallen off, but, yes, it was still standing.

QUESTION: And when you returned six weeks later was it still standing then?

ANSWER: I told the police before. It had burned. Every house on the street had burned. Every house in our neighborhood burned. Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but do you not know what happened in this city? Have you not looked around?

QUESTION: I assure you, I’m not here to mock the loss of your home, Mrs. Hocking. I am only establishing the facts for the record. My record. I apologize for asking questions you have already answered. But I must ask them. You returned to your home six weeks after the earthquake and found it had burned? There was nothing left of it?

ANSWER: Nothing but ashes.

QUESTION: And you would have no way of knowing if Mr. Hocking returned to the house after the earthquake but before it burned?

ANSWER: How could I? I was not there.

QUESTION: Yes. Now, if we may go back to the day of the earthquake. You have said that you and Katharine found your way to the refugee camp at Golden Gate Park when the fires began. Do I have that right?

ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: And during your four days at the refugee camp you didn’t hear from your husband, correct? He did not join you there?

ANSWER: No. As I said before, he was away on a business trip. He travels for a living.

QUESTION: So, to be clear, your husband left on his business trip before the earthquake and you have had no contact with him since?

ANSWER: I have not. Have you come by some new information about where he is? I think I have a right to know.

QUESTION: I believe I have come upon some new information, yes. But I’m not sure if this new intelligence aligns with what we know already. That is why I need to revisit some of the details you provided from the initial investigation into his disappearance, to see if what I’ve recently learned is consistent with the previously reported details. May we continue?

ANSWER: If this will assist you in finding my husband, then of course.

QUESTION: Thank you. Now, for the record, then, you married Martin Hocking the same day you met him, is that correct?

ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: And can you tell me why you did that?

ANSWER: Why I did what?

QUESTION: Married Mr. Hocking the same day you met him.

ANSWER: It is not against the law to marry someone you’ve just met, is it?

QUESTION: Indeed, it is not. I am curious, you see.

ANSWER: I married Martin because he asked me.

QUESTION: You had answered a newspaper advertisement that he’d placed in the New York Times? For a wife and mother. He had advertised that he was a widower with a young child. Do I have that right?

ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION: And then you traveled to San Francisco from New York to marry Mr. Hocking, even though the two of you had not yet met?

ANSWER: I did.

QUESTION: Because?

ANSWER: Because, what?

QUESTION: Mrs. Hocking, are you declining to tell me why you married a man you’d only just met?

ANSWER: I am not declining, sir. I married him because I wanted to.

March 1905

The sun is dissolving like an enchantment as I stand at the ferry railing and look out on the San Francisco horizon. The day will end jubilant. Jubilant. This is the word I chose this morning from Da’s book of words, and I’ve been keen to use it since breakfast. My father wrote that jubilant means you feel as though you finally possess everything you’ve always wanted, you are that happy. I like the way the word rolls off my tongue when I say it. I want to believe the day will end on a jubilant note. I am counting on it.

Most of the ferry’s passengers aren’t on the deck watching the golden sun fold itself into the western rim of the sky. They are seated inside, out of the bracing wind, but I don’t want to be tucked indoors after six long days on a train.

I close my eyes as the heady fragrance of the ocean transports me as if in a dream to Gram’s cottage in Donaghadee above the slate Irish Sea. I can see the house in my mind’s eye just as it was when I was young, back when life was simple. I can see Gram making me a cup of sugar tea in her kitchen while a harbor breeze tickles the lace curtains she made from her wedding dress. On the kitchen table are shortbread cookies arranged on the daisy plate, and still warm from the oven. She is humming an old Gaelic tune. . . .

But no.

I’ve spent too many hours pondering what I wouldn’t do to go back in time to Gram’s kitchen, what I’d be willing to give up. What I’d be willing to give. I open my eyes to behold again the nearness of the San Francisco docks.

Backward glances are of no use to me now.

I move away from the railing to the shelter of an overhang and tuck loose strands of hair back into place. I don’t want to step off the ferry looking like a street urchin. Not today.

I look down at my skirt to see how bad the wrinkles are. Not too noticeable in the day’s diminishing light. My journey from New York to California took place on a second-class seat, not in a private sleeping car, hence the creases. I’d not expected anything different, as Martin Hocking had written that he is in good financial standing, not that he is rich. That he has means of any amount is miracle enough. I would have ridden in the baggage car all the way to get out of the umbrella factory and the tenement, and especially away from young Irishwomen just like me who reminded me too frequently of what I left back home.

If my mother could see me now, she’d no doubt put me on the first train back to New York. But then, Mam doesn’t know how bad it was. I didn’t want to worry her, so she doesn’t know that the room I was subletting with four flatmates was no bigger than a kitchen pantry and that a single spigot in the back alley provided the only water to drink, bathe, and cook with for the entire building. She doesn’t know everyone dumped their chamber pots out their windows because there were no indoor toilets-despite city ordinances requiring them-and that the stink of human waste hung on the air like a drape. The tenement wasn’t a place to come home to at the end of the workday. It was just a shared room with sagging mattresses, a place where dreams for a better life could unravel faster than your threadbare clothes, and where girls like me from Belfast and Armagh and Derry and other Irish towns laid their heads at night.

“I had a neighbor lady in Chicago when I was growing up who was from Ireland,” a woman seated across from me said hours earlier, as our train chuffed through the Nevada desert. “She came to America as a young girl during that terrible time when there was nothing to eat in Ireland and nothing would grow. That was years ago. I wasn’t even born yet, so that was long before you were alive. She told me it was something awful, that time. Whole families starved to death.” The woman shook her head in pity.

There isn’t a soul back home who hasn’t heard of those long years of scarcity. Everyone in County Down called that time the Great Famine. Gram, who defiantly spoke Gaelic until her dying breath, called it An Gorta M—r. The Great Hunger, as if to say it wasn’t the lack of food that is remembered but how that stretch of years made people feel. Ravenous and empty and wanting.

“Yes. I’ve been told ’twas a terrible time,” I replied.

The woman then asked if I’d immigrated to America with my whole family.

I thought of Mason, my brother who came to America first and sponsored me, and who is now living somewhere in Canada with a woman he fell in love with. “No. Just me.”

“You came all by yourself?” the woman said. “I think that’s very brave. And you’re so young!”

I smiled at this because some days I feel as though I’ve already lived several lifetimes and others as though I haven’t lived any kind of life at all, that I’m still waiting for it to start. Or waiting for it to start over.

I answered I was twenty, nearly twenty-one.

“What lovely cheekbones you have, and such beautiful black hair,” the woman continued. “I didn’t know Irish had black hair. I thought you were all redheads and blonds and auburns.”

And then the woman asked what was bringing me all the way from New York to San Francisco.

So many reasons. I gave her the easy one. “I’m getting married.”

The woman offered me her congratulations and asked what my future husband’s name was. As she did so, I realized I was itching to have someone older and wiser tell me I was making a sensible choice, an understandable one, considering how hard and complicated the world is.

“His name is Mr. Martin Hocking. Would you like to see his picture?”

The woman smiled and nodded.

I reached into my handbag and pulled out the photograph Martin had mailed to me. He was dressed in a vested pinstripe suit, his wavy hair gelled into place and his trimmed mustache partly covering his lips. He wore a fixed, charismatic gaze that I’d gotten lost in every time I looked at it. I’d had the photograph for less than two weeks but I knew its every inch.

“My, oh my! But he is handsome,” the woman said. “Such striking eyes. He looks like he could see into your very soul.”

“He’s . . . he’s a widower, newly arrived to San Francisco from Los Angeles. He has a little girl named Katharine. He calls her Kat. She’s only five. Her mother died of consumption and the child has had a rough time of it.”

“Oh, how sad! Aren’t you a dear to take on the role of mother and wife all at once.” The woman reached for my arm and laid her hand gently across it in astonishment, empathy, and maybe even admiration. And then she wished upon me every happiness and excused herself to find a porter to get a cup of tea.

I wanted the woman to ask how I met Martin so that I could gauge her response, but even after she came back with her cup, she didn’t ask. While she was off to look for the porter, I imagined how I would’ve replied. I withdraw the photograph now from my handbag and remind myself of that answer as the pier grows ever nearer.

I’ve not met him yet, I would’ve said to the woman. I answered his newspaper advertisement. He was looking for a new wife for himself and a new mother for his little girl. He didn’t want a woman from San Francisco. He wanted someone from the East, where he is from. Someone who doesn’t need coddling. Someone who is ready to step into his late wife’s role without fanfare. I wrote to him and told him I didn’t need coddling. I wanted what he could offer me-a nice and cozy home, someone to care for, a child to love.

The woman, surely wide-eyed, might’ve replied, But . . . but what if you are unhappy with him? What if he is unkind to you?

And I would’ve told her that this is what I’d contemplated the longest in my tenement room before I left it, while rats scurried back and forth in the hall, while babies cried and men drank their sorrows and women wailed theirs, while the couple in the room above banged the walls while they fought and the couple in the room below banged the walls while they pleasured each other, and while my stomach clenched in hunger and I shivered in the damp.

It can’t be worse than what I’ve already known, I would’ve said. Besides. He doesn’t look like someone who would hurt people, does he?

I look at the portrait now, at this visage of a man who looks as near to perfection as a man could.