THE BROKEN PLACES

Vancouver. A day like any other. Kyle, a successful cosmetic surgeon, is punishing himself with a sprint up a mountain. Charlotte, wife of a tech tycoon, is combing the farm belt for local cheese and a sense of purpose. Back in the city their families go about their business: landscaping, negotiating deals, skipping school. It's a day like any other--until suddenly it's not.

When the earthquake hits, the city erupts in chaos and fear. Kyle's and Charlotte's families, along with two passersby, are thrown together in an oceanfront mansion. The conflicts that beset these wildly different people expose the fault lines beneath their relationships, as they question everything in an effort to survive and reunite with their loved ones stranded outside the city.

Frances Peck's debut novel examines the unpredictable ways in which disaster can shake up lives and test personal resilience.

Frances Peck wrote fiction and poetry until her early twenties, when the realities of adulthood and rent steered her toward a career as a freelance writer, ghostwriter, editor, and instructor. Known for her writing and workshops on the finer points of language, she's the author of Peck's English Pointers (an online writing tool), a co-author of the HyperGrammar website, and an occasional essayist and blogger. Frances returns to her first love, fiction, with The Broken Places, part of the Nunatak First Fiction Series.