Emotionally Provoking ~ A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner ~ Review

            

At times emotionally overwhelming, a woven thread of character stories that tore at my heart – and then proceeded to put it back together again – “A Fall of Marigolds” is sure to impact lives and remind readers of what they have to be grateful for.

           

Set between two American tragedies in 1911 and again on 9/11 there were scenes throughout the book that were so emotionally evoking that I almost wanted to set the book down and breathe a different breath of air. I was taken to the streets of Manhattan on both of these tragedies that tore at my heart.

          

  Clara and Taryn are two women, separated by one hundred years and yet tied together with this piece of cloth, a scarf that has seen them through some of the hardest points of their life. While the story has much going on within our characters, there is a tremendous level of hope. The story is told so both spectrums are well balanced and I found I didn’t want to put the book down. I wanted to find out what happened to these women that came alive on the page.

            

This novel is written for the secular market, but one no less powerful with a story line that I think will connect with so many readers. It takes a great deal of emotional energy to write an emotionally impactful story and that was certainly accomplished within this novel.

           

This review is my honest opinion. Thanks to the author and publisher for my copy to review.

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More about the novel...

A beautiful scarf, passed down through the generations, connects two women who learn that the weight of the world is made bearable by the love we give away....

September 1911. On Ellis Island in New York Harbor, nurse Clara Wood cannot face returning to Manhattan, where the man she loved fell to his death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Then, while caring for a fevered immigrant whose own loss mirrors hers, she becomes intrigued by a name embroidered onto the scarf he carries…and finds herself caught in a dilemma that compels her to confront the truth about the assumptions she’s made. Will what she learns devastate her or free her? 

September 2011. On Manhattan’s Upper West Side, widow Taryn Michaels has convinced herself that she is living fully, working in a charming specialty fabric store and raising her daughter alone. Then a long-lost photograph appears in a national magazine, and she is forced to relive the terrible day her husband died in the collapse of the World Trade Towers…the same day a stranger reached out and saved her. Will a chance reconnection and a century-old scarf open Taryn’s eyes to the larger forces at work in her life?