Sophie Whalen left Ireland to come to the United States. She expected to live with her brother but he fell in love, married and moved to Canada. Left in New York by herself, the best Sophie could do was work in a sweatshop and live in a ratty tenement. Was this what she came for? Then she saw the ad. A man in San Francisco was looking for a wife to keep his house and raise his young daughter after he found himself a widower. Sophie answered the ad and was shocked but pleased when she was chosen.
After a long journey, she meets Martin Hocking and they go immediately to City Hall and marry. She is taken to a beautiful house she never thought she could live in and met Kat who is seven. Kat has taken her mother's death hard and doesn't speak, having retreated into herself. Sophie quickly becomes close to her as she always wanted children and it is usually only the two of them. Martin tells her he works in insurance and has to travel most of the time. Sophie and Kat explore San Francisco and slowly Kat starts to emerge from her shell.
Then the doorbell rings. Another woman is standing there and she thinks that she is Martin's wife. What is going on? As the two women confer and look for paperwork, they find that Martin is a serial con man who marries multiple women. Why? What does he hope to gain? Martin returns just in time for the women to confront him and then the San Francisco earthquake hits. Sophie, Kat and the other woman escape but Martin is left behind, perhaps to live, perhaps to die.
Susan Meissner is an American author who writes in the women's fiction genre. In this novel, I learned a lot about the San Francisco earthquake I never knew and I gained new respect for the magnitude of this natural disaster. Everyone in the novel had secrets and these are uncovered to explain everything. Sophie is the heroine and her love for Kat is her defining characteristic. This book is recommended for women's and historical fiction readers.
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