Saturday, February 8, 2014

Blog Tour Book Review: A Fall of Marigolds

A Fall of MarigoldsAuthor: Susan Meissner
Publication Date: February 4, 2014
Publisher: NAL Trade

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 shes 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 Taryns eyes to the larger forces at work in her life?


All the fabric in the world could not muffle the roar of my regret.

I was not afraid of fire. I was in dreadful awe of how everything you were sure of could be swept away in a moment.

I saw tiny glimpses of the life I knew, which surely waited for me still, in the faces of the hopeful.

I had a wounded heart. Like his. That is what I had.



I love books in which the main characters are connected by a single item, items, letters, etc. that they both shared. These types of books share a warmness and usually touch different time periods in which these characters lived. This book has these same characteristics as two characters, both living in New York but 100 years apart, are experiencing some of the same feelings and are connected through a unique scarf. Clara lives in 1911 New York and is an immigration nurse suffering from heartbreak and loss in the aftermath of a building fire in New York. We then meet Taryn, who is a single mother living in the aftermath of 9/11 where she lost the father to her child and suffered a tremendous heartbreak on that monumental day. These story made me pause and reflect multiple times; those are the best kind!

I cannot even begin to say how much I loved this story. It made me reflect, cry, smile, and be thankful for the love I have found in my own life. The scarf that these women shared was the glue that held their stories together and I loved seeing where the scarf ended up at the end; however, I will not go into this because I do not want to give anything away. I kept thinking to myself how talented Susan Meissner, the author, really must be in order to make a scarf such a monumental object in the story of these extraordinary women!

This story has a little bit of everything and will touch places in your heart that you did not know existed. When I finished this book I started reading the first chapter again because I knew just how much I was going to miss the characters and being able to look into their lives. Both of these women, Clara and Taryn, were wonderful examples of what a well-rounded heroine should be. I could draw inspiration from them both on so many levels!

***A copy of this book was provided to me by the publishers at NAL Trade in exchange for my honest review***






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