A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner

Clara Wood lost a love in the Triangle Shirtwaiste Fire in September 1911. She saw him jump from the window and fall to his death, and the experience so traumatized her that she has left Manhattan and become a nurse at Ellis Island.  When her fellow nurses take the ferry to NY on weekends to go dancing, she hides herself in her room, to avoid thinking about what happened.  It is her safe, inbetween place.  In September 2011, Taryn watched as the Twin Towers collapse in front of her. That morning she was to meet her husband there for breakfast and planned to tell him she was expecting. She was delayed because of meeting a business meeting about an antique scarf...a scarf that used to belong to Clara.  The strip of fabric and a histroy of grief and loss tie the two women together across time. The same scarf also leads each of them through the "inbetween" place to a brighter future. 

This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I am so glad. It is a lovely and poiniant historical fiction that I am sure I will be recommending to all of my friends.  Both Clara and Taryn feel authentic in their grief and vulnerablity.  The two men that help them through their valley of sorrow are also well drawn and human. I feel that the author must have, at some time, dealt with crippling anxiety, because she portrays Clara's aversion to returning to NY with stunning realism. It was also interesting for me to read Taryn's experience watching the Twin Towers fall.  It made me realize I had intentionally avoided first person accounts of the event because it was too traumatic for me, even though I have no personal connection to the event.  Now, 11 years later, it is good to open myself up a little to understanding what that must have been like for the thousands who lost loved ones that day. (2014, 400p)