A Fall of Marigolds

A Fall of Marigolds is Susan Meissner’s 2014 dual timeline historical novel, structured around two devastating events almost a century apart. In 1911, Clara Wood is a young nurse working at the Ellis Island hospital, having retreated to the immigrant medical center after the man she had begun to love died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that killed nearly a hundred and fifty workers, mostly young women. In 2011, Taryn Michaels is a Manhattan textiles shop owner whose husband died in the September 11 attacks ten years earlier, and who is finally beginning to be able to think about what comes next.

The connecting thread between the two timelines is a vibrant scarf patterned with marigolds. Clara comes into possession of the scarf at Ellis Island under circumstances that change the course of her life. The same scarf, now nearly a hundred years old, ends up in Taryn’s New York shop, and the two women’s stories slowly converge through the object that has passed between them across the decades.

Susan Meissner writes accessible historical and contemporary fiction with strong faith inflected themes that her Christian fiction readers love and that crossover readers also appreciate. Her handling of grief, both Clara’s and Taryn’s, is careful and realistic. The Triangle fire material is well researched and the Ellis Island setting is rendered with the kind of period detail that grounds the reader without overwhelming the story. The September 11 sections are handled with particular sensitivity, with Meissner clearly aware of the recent and unhealed nature of the wound for her contemporary American readers.

For readers who enjoy Lisa Wingate, Marie Benedict, Kate Quinn, or the dual timeline historical fiction that has dominated the genre over the past decade, Meissner is squarely in the same neighborhood. A Fall of Marigolds is one of her most accomplished novels and a strong introduction to her work.