Fault Lines

Approaching exhaustion after years of caring for her family, Merrit Fowler joins her daughter and sister in California, and an earthquake brings them closer together. 250,000 first printing. $250,000 ad/promo. Lit Guild & Doubleday Main. Tour.

Her 11th novel (after Downtown) finds Siddons squarely back on track with an immensely readable narrative that's been trimmed of excesses and?except for the ending?unnecessary melodrama. In fact, even the symbolism here is lean and explicit: Merritt Fowler is at the end of her emotional tether and about to crack; then the earth does, in an earthquake that imperils her and three people she loves. The fault lines in Merritt's character are common to women, Siddons implies. Since her mother's death when she was 13, Merritt has been a willing caretaker for members of her family: first her younger sister, "fragile, lovely, hungry" Laura, now 38 and still a would-be actress; then her husband Pom, a doctor dedicated to the patients in his Atlanta clinics but demanding and dictatorial at home; then Pom's Alzheimer's-demented mother, Mommee. Merritt knows she's shortchanging her 16-year-old daughter, Glynn, who has survived one bout with anorexia but is again close to despair because she feels neglected by her father. When Glynn runs away to her aunt Laura in California, Merritt follows to bring her home but is caught up in circumstances that will forever change the lives of all three women. If Siddons initially makes Merritt a bit too perfect, selfless and saintly, she nicely traces the flowering of her heroine's self-image during several crises and a bittersweet love affair. Settings are authentically rendered, from Atlanta's upper-crust social milieu to Hollywood's tawdry glitz and the serene beauty of the redwood country near Santa Cruz. Neatly alternating earthquake lore with steamy sex scenes, Siddons manages her absorbing, if predictable, narrative with panache?and though the earthquake is employed as a tear-jerking deus ex machina, readers will probably take the device as fair exchange for the various epiphanies and rites of passage that Glynn, Laura and Merritt experience. $250,000 ad/promo; first serial to Good Housekeeping; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selections; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Siddons has produced another heartwrenching drama of Southern women in her 11th novel. As in Downtown (LJ 6/15/94), Siddons deliciously portrays the story of three women who have failed to find internal happiness. Merritt Fowler has spent her entire life in the role of caretaker. After the death of her mother, Merritt provides for her naive and illustrious sister, Laura, who longs to be an actress. But when Merritt meets Pomeroy (Pom) Fowler, the doctor on a crusade to save the world, Laura exits her life. Soon Merritt finds herself taking care of Pom's two sons; his aging, senile mother; and their daughter, Glynn, who is battling anorexia. When Pom's mother lights all Glynn's clothes on fire, the young woman flees to California to seek solace with her Aunt Laura. Merritt soon follows, and there the three women attempt to rectify their tormented relationships. Siddons keeps readers absorbed until the climactic ending, complete with natural disasters. Recommended for all collections.
--Shannon Dekle, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Like Robert Waller's Bridges of Madison County (1992) and Anne Tyler's Ladder of Years , Siddons' new novel tells of a self-sacrificing housewife who is tempted to walk away from her old life. It's apparent from the get go, though, that Siddons is working more along the lines of Waller's melodrama than Tyler's wry sendup. Merritt Fowler is exhausted from caring for her elderly mother-in-law, who's suffering from Alzheimer's disease. When a nasty argument compels her fragile 16-year-old daughter, Glynn, to seek refuge with Merritt's glamorous sister in California, Merritt follows, leaving her workaholic husband behind. The three women soon decide to take a trip to the Santa Cruz Mountains for a little R and R. In a remote lodge in the redwoods, Merritt meets and falls for an amateur seismologist, and Glynn is wooed by a Warren Beatty^-like director. Then an earthquake hits, and as the three women make the long, arduous trek to safety, they reevaluate their lives and goals. There's enough Sturm und Drang in this one to register 8.0 on the Richter scale, and Siddons pumps up every scene with overly lush prose and strangled dialogue: "`Whenever you see redwoods in National Geographic, or fog, or watch Shamu on TV, you'll be seeing me.'" (Did he say Shamu?) With a red-hot theme, Hollywood glam, a natural disaster, anorexia--everything, in fact, but the kitchen sink--Siddons can't miss. Read it and weep. Joanne Wilkinson