Fault Lines
by Anne Rivers Siddons
List Price: $6.99
Pages: 368
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0061093343
Publisher: HarperCollins
Merritt Fowler is a natural caretaker. Ever since her mother
died when Merritt was three, she's been taking care of her the people
in her life. First it was her grieving father and her headstrong younger
sister, Laura, then her husband Pom, her destructive and malevolent mother-in-law,
Mommee, and her anorexic young daughter, Glynn. With so much caretaking
going on, Merritt has little time left over for herself and her own needs.
Exhausted and confused, she no longer knows who she is, or what is important
to her. But she knows the situation in her household has come to a crisis.
In the throes of Alzheimer's, Mommee's behavior has become downright dangerous,
and Pom's insistence that she be cared for at home has driven a wedge
between Glynn and her parents. When the crisis reaches a boiling point,
and Glynn runs away from her Atlanta home to stay with her Aunt Laura,
now an actress in Hollywood, Merritt feels compelled to follow. Glynn
is awed by Laura's seemingly glamorous Hollywood connections and Merritt
feels her control over her daughter slipping even further away. On impulse,
the three women take off in Laura's Mustang convertible up the coast to
a remote hideaway in the Santa Cruz mountains outside San Francisco, earthquake
country. There, in the protective shade of the great redwoods, Merritt,
Glynn and Laura struggle to see if the widening fissures between mother,
daughter and sister can be healed. When the strange, hermit-like caretaker
of their hideaway, T.C. Bridgewater, begins to introduce Merritt to the
beauty and power of earthquakes, she feels her old identity slipping away,
and a whole new Merritt emerging. With the ground shifting beneath her
feet, literally and metaphorically, Merritt must redefine herself and
her relationships with all the people she loves, before it's too late.
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1. Merritt talks of a "woman she left behind in Atlanta" and a new woman who has emerged in the redwoods. Is one more "the real" Merritt than the other? Were they both always present within her? What was it about the Santa Cruz mountains that enabled the second Merritt to appear? How do you think she might reconcile the two of them?
2. Why do you think Siddons chose to set her novel in earthquake country? Are earthquakes an apt metaphor for Merritt's situation? How so? What is destroyed in the earthquake Merritt, Laura and Gynn experience? What does each woman lose? What does each gain?
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