I read this after reading Stewart O'Nan's vastly superior book, "The Circus Fire." Otherwise, the the novel that is the subject of this review would have made little sense.

The problem is that things just seem to happen willy nilly. The fireman casts aside a girl he's about to marry to take up with a scarred survivor of the circus fire. Why? Why was the first girl even introduced? And the novel just goes on from there.

Most irritating, perhaps, is the daughter, Martha, whose only reason for being seems to be to explain to the dumb reader the psychological workings beneath the surface. I got to the point that I just didn't care. Martha reminded me of Scarpatta's niece in a Patricia Cornwell thriller: smarmy, irritating, and ultimately a pain in the you know what.

The denouement of this novel is just too, too pat. Still, it's an improvement over the middle third of the book, which is where we are treated to all the pop psychology. Alas, this could have been so much better if it had been thought out better.

This book springboards from the real-life fire 50 years ago that killed hundreds of people and destroyed the Ringling Bros. circus when it played in Hartford. One child survived, grew up and married a mysteriously solicitous fireman. This is the story, not only of their marriage, but of the secrets that, like one layer of an onion after another, peel off and reveal, finally, the unguessable ending. I couldn't stop turning the pages