I love well written and researched historical novels. I think this is only my second book read on the topic of the 1906 massive San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires that displaced so many lives, both the rich and the poor.

In the year before- young Sophie, an Irish immigrant, answers a mail-order bride ad to escape the awful tenament she lives in in New York. Martin Hocking is looking for someone to wed to take care of his daughter who hasn't spoken since her mother died. He wants to look good to his business associates.

Sophie discovers her husband's dark secrets in the form of Belinda, a heavily pregnant woman that shows up on her doorstep claiming she's married to Sophie's husband but under a different name.

Then the earthquake strikes. Sophia now has to survive and get her young daughter Kat from under his thumb.

I really liked how Sophie and Belinda bond I've stuck an awful thing that's been done to both of them. I truly could not put this book down. It's a beautiful story of survival in many different forms. I felt right there in the story with them. I like that this story was interwoven with a transcript between Sophie and a US Marshall in the aftermath of the earthquake and seeing all these (most of the time hard) truths come out.