Invisible Fault Lines

Gr 10 Up—On Tuesday, Callie's father disappears. He simply never comes home from work. There are no family problems to suggest that he left and no reason to think there was a crime committed. When Callie's friends take her to an exhibit documenting the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, she thinks she sees her father in one of the photographs. Could it be a relative from the past? Could time travel be real—or accidental? Chapters alternate between Callie's days and the experiences of the man in the photograph as he deals with the horrific quake and his loss of memory. This is a strong read and will pique interest in the actual earthquake. Callie and her mother get to know each other on a different level than they did before, much as families do when a tragedy occurs. The author adeptly shows that life goes on, even in the middle of a sorrowful situation. Callie begins to develop romantic feelings for an old classmate, her band gets its first gig, and her gay best friend goes through a bad relationship. This title is reminiscent of Susan Beth Pfeffer's The Year Without Michael (Bantam, 1987), in which the case of a missing brother never gets resolved. Readers wanting more stories about characters who experienced the earthquake will want to read William Lavender's Aftershocks (Harcourt, 2006) or Deborah Hopkinson's Into the Firestorm: A Novel of 1906 (Knopf, 2006).