A scrap of coloured fabric connects the tragic events of September eleventh in New York with the Triangle Shirtwaist fire over a hundred years ago.

In A FALL OF MARIGOLDS, Taryn runs a textile store in Manhattan where she has managed to bury her memories of surviving the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre. She has a little daughter in school now and life is busy. A different picture of New York emerges when we look through the eyes of Clara from Pennsylvania working on Ellis Island. As a nurse, she cares for the polyglot immigrants being examined and quarantined on the doorstep of the city. In August 1911, she still carries nightmares of the industrial accident in the garment district which she had survived, when 147 employees died.

The immigrants have a heartbreaking life, for not only have they left all they knew behind, they have lost loved ones to illnesses like scarlet fever and measles. The main item of value they carry is their trade. Clare is reluctant to leave the busy island, afraid to rejoin life when tragedies are so shocking. She breaks the rules to help a Welshman whose sole reminder of his wife is a flowered scarf. Clara had a friend, a young man called Edward, who died in the fire, and to get past her grief she decides to find out more about him and visit his grave. Through Taryn's eyes, we see the modern tragedy; she was to have met her husband in one of the towers and was delayed by a customer asking her to match an old silk scarf. Taryn survived, but was widowed, and carries regrets.

My main complaint is that the attractive picture of flowers on the first page of each chapter, made for tediously slow progress through the computer reader. Other than that, I read quickly, absorbing the many details and the disparate lives of Taryn and Clara. I found the retelling of 9/11 distressing as I still don't look at anything about that day. Readers might choose to skip a few pages. The two women each inspire admiration as they seek reassurance of love, while a broad portrait of the city past and present is painted. As all such stories must, A FALL OF MARIGOLDS has a bittersweet ending. Read Susan Meissner's book with a box of tissues handy.