The Fragments

Suspenseful and intriguing story of The Fragments of a long lost book on display at the museum bring out the people who are interested in finding out what really happened to the author of original book.

Toni Jordan builds suspense as the reader works along with Caddie Walker to uncover the mystery surrounding the last book written by her favorite author, Inga Karlson.  After seeing the exhibit of the remaining burnt fragments from Inga's last book, The Days, The Minutes, which burned with her in a warehouse fire, Caddie searches for an elderly woman she saw at the exhibit.  Working in a book store, Caddie reconnects with people from her past who were also interested in the author and her story.

Following the trend of other books I have loved this year, this story is told in alternating chapters between Inga's story in 1930's New York City and Caddie's life in 1980's Brisbane, Australia.
The story is tied to together by Rachel.  She was a young girl fresh from a farm life with a happy family to a change in the family's fortune, and an angry violent father.  Escaping to the big city, Rachel is working as a waitress and trying to make a life for herself when she meets Inga.  Inga is living a dazzling lifestyle of glamour and fame, after her first novel was extremely successful.  She takes Rachel along for the ride.  Rachel is enamoured of Inga and cannot believe that anyone would look at her this way, "New York is a town powered by fame: most of the shop girls and waitresses and cigarette girls and busboys and delivery boys have travelled to this heaving city to become the person they know they can be. The thin skin between the life you have and the life you desire - this a good part of New York's charm."

Caddie also a fan of Inga Karlson's first novel, All Has An End, and hungry to know what happened to the author and her second novel all those years ago, works to solve the mystery that was never solved because of the war that soon the nation's attention.  Caddie throws herself into discovering the secret which gives her a chance to shrug off the burden of her past and start off down a new path. 

This book is part historical fiction, with a bit romance thrown in.  It is not a mystery but there is a sense of suspense as we uncover the secrets at the core of the novel.  All is tied up at the end in a neat package, but getting there is particularly enjoyable.