Hollow Bones

When Molly Fitzgerald was only two months old, her mother went to an appointment at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and never came home. Her father and the stepmother who raised her couldn't have loved her more, but she still grew up with a healthy dread of disasters.

Now an adult, she runs the Rhode Island Department for Emergency Preparedness, mapping out ways to save lives during storms, epidemics, and airplane crashes. She and her husband, Jesse—a police polygraph expert with his own history of crisis—have found a love that is a solace in a dangerous world. But then the unexpected upends their new marriage, leading them both to question everything they thought they knew.

Moving between past and present, Hollow Bones tells an epic story of the lies we tell ourselves as we write the narratives of our lives, the plans we design to protect ourselves at the worst moments, and the ties that bind mothers and daughters.