It's true, Mara Purl's fifth novel begins with an outrageous pun
- as a
powerful earthquake rumbles through her picturesque town of
"Milford-Haven" a fault opens up right down the middle
of Main Street. But she then makes the pun worth our while
by revealing that every resident of the town seems to harbor a
latent anger at their fellow citizens, blaming them for the
ensuing devastation to tourist trade and peaceful cohabitation.
The saucy accusations and remorseless self-justifications
accelerate when the body of a missing woman turns up when an
aftershock loosens the foundation of a seaside mansion under
construction.
But as the tale unfolds, it's forgiveness that begins to surface,
and blame slides off the shoulders of residents as several
characters find reasons and ways to forgive themselves and one
another.
Though all Purl's novels are based on extensive research, Nobody's
Fault was the culmination of a year of reading text books and
interviewing seismologists from Cal Tech to the Central Coast.
Many of the facts she uncovered are relatively unknown to Central
Coast citizens, who have slipped into denial that they live in a
seismically active area, since the last large event was decades
ago.
Purl first whetted our appetites with hit radio series
Milford-Haven, U.S.A. which had four and a half million listeners
on the BBC. She now serves up an enticing web site at
www.milfordhaven.com. And if you like broadcasting museum
shops, all the major ones carry the Milford-Haven audio tapes.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the novels turns out to be
the journal entries, which so far have ended each book. The
fast paced language of the main text gives way to deeply
reflective soul-searching, replete with metaphor and observation.
Indeed the title of each novel becomes the theme for each diary
segment - a kind of expansively explored poetic icon which
illuminates the preceding text, and foreshadows the next novel in
the series.
If you're searching for what to read next, and want a combination
of escapism and thought-provoking prose - and perhaps even
the possibility of prophecy - your answer is Nobody's Fault.
To read more about Nobody's Fault
http://www.havenbooks.net/fiction-mhnovels-nobody.shtml
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