IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS EVENT WILL NOW BE HELD VIRTUALLY!

Due to the ongoing concerns of COVID, this former live and in-person event will now pivot to a virtual event. If you had registered for the in-person event, you should have received notification of the change to a virtual event and how it will affect you.

About the Virtual Event

Get ready Adventurers; we are ready to set off shock waves as we kick off the new year with beloved San Diego author Susan Meissner,  as she discusses her new historical novel, The Nature of Fragile Things, set during the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Event epicenters:

11:30am – Pacific Time

12:30pm – Mountain Time

1:30pm – Central Time

2:30pm – Eastern Time

Your Adventure includes an autographed hardcover book, interactive book discussion in a Zoom meeting (not in webinar format), Q&A, powerpoint presentation by the author, and a special added bonus (available only to our Adventurers) to be shared with you during the event!

About the Author and Book

Susan Meissner is a USA Today (and soon-to-be New York Times) bestselling author of historical fiction with more than half a million books in print in fifteen languages. She is an author, speaker and writing workshop leader with a background in community journalism. Her novels include The Last Year of the War, named to Real Simple magazine’s list of best books for 2019; As Bright as Heaven, which earned a starred review in Library Journal; Secrets of  Charmed Life, a Goodreads finalist for Best Historical Fiction 2015; and A Fall of Marigolds, named to Booklist’s Top Ten Women’s Fiction titles for 2014. A California native, she attended Point Loma Nazarene University and is also a writing workshop volunteer for Words Alive, a San Diego non-profit dedicated to helping at-risk youth foster a love for reading and writing.

In her new book, The Nature of Fragile Things, hailed by Publishers Weekly in a starred review as “ingeniously plotted and perfectly structured,” a mail-order bride desperate to get out of New York marries a mysterious San Francisco widower whose 5-year old child does not speak, but her hastily cobbled-together happiness is forever changed by a massive earthquake that shakes up everything.

1905 – Sophie Whalen is a young Irish immigrant so anxious to get out of a Lower Manhattan tenement that she answers a mail-order bride ad and agrees to marry a man she knows nothing about. San Francisco widower Martin Hocking proves to be as aloof as he is mesmerizingly handsome. Sophie quickly develops deep affection for Kat, Martin’s silent five-year-old daughter, but Martin’s odd behavior leaves her with the uneasy feeling that something about her newfound situation isn’t right.

Then one early-spring evening, a stranger at the door sets in motion a transforming chain of events. Sophie discovers hidden ties to two other women. The first, pretty and pregnant, is standing on her doorstep. The second is hundreds of miles away in the American Southwest, grieving the loss of everything she once loved.

The fates of these three women intertwine on the eve of the devastating earthquake, thrusting them onto a perilous journey that will test their resiliency and resolve and, ultimately, their belief that love can overcome fear. Here is a novel about the bonds of friendship and mother love, and the power of female solidarity…