Fault Lines

Throughout her life Merritt has cared for all those around her. When Glynn, her stepdaughter runs away, Merritt follows her but soon decides that she is going to stay in California, where she finds an unexpected love and confronts Glynn before an earthquake strikes. From the author of HILL TOWNS and DOWNTOWN.

Merritt Fowler is a natural caretaker. Most of her life she has cared for her beautiful, erratic younger sister Laura; her self-sacrificing physician husband, Pom; and her lovely, fragile sixteen-year-old daughter, Glynn. Now, in this strange summer of unnaturally warm weather and growing pressures, she is caring too for her husband's destructive, controlling mother, who is ill with advanced Alzheimer's disease. Exhausted and confused, Merritt no longer knows quite who she is or what is important to her. She knows only that something deep inside is about to crack.

A fierce family quarrel sends Glynn running west from Atlanta to seek sanctuary with her aunt Laura, a fine actress whose promising Hollywood career is in decline. Merritt goes after her daughter -- against Pom's wishes and in the face of his anger -- and she impulsively decides to stay in California to see if the widening fissures between mother, sister and daughter can be healed. After a head-on collision with Laura's shallow, seductive Hollywood world and her betraying film director lover, the three women end up in Laura's red convertible, barreling up the wild coast from the Palm Springs Desert to the Santa Cruz Mountains outside San Francisco -- earthquake country. In a borrowed lodge among the redwoods, they finally stop to confront one another and their own demons.

When all the fault lines converge and erupt -- those of the heart and those buried deep beneath the mountain lodge -- each woman must seek within herself the bedrock core of strength and courage that will save and change her life. With a wrenching, deeply moving climax and the masterfully drawn characters that are a sparkling hallmark of Anne Rivers Siddons' rich storytelling powers, Fault Lines is a swift and remarkable novel.