Hollow Bones

Molly Fitzgerald was two months old on September 11, 2001, when her mother left for an appointment at the World Trade Center and never came back. Her father and the stepmother who raised her gave her a loving home. Even so, she grew up braced for disaster.

As an adult, Molly directs the Rhode Island Department for Emergency Preparedness. Her days go to planning how to save lives in storms, epidemics and airplane crashes. Work like that suits a woman who has never trusted the world to stay safe.

She is newly married to Jesse, a police polygraph expert who has lived through a crisis of his own. Together they have found a steady kind of love, a refuge from everything that can go wrong outside their door.

Then something unexpected breaks into the marriage. Both of them are pushed to doubt what they believed they knew about their lives and each other.

The narrative moves between past and present. It follows the plans people make for their worst moments, the stories they tell themselves to get through, and the bond between mothers and daughters.