Amazing Grace: A Novel

On a warm May night in San Francisco, the Ritz-Carlton ballroom shimmers with crystal and silver as a glittering, celebrity-studded crowd gathers for a charity dinner dance. The evening is perfect–until, just minutes before midnight, the room begins to sway. Glass shatters. And as the lights go out, people begin to scream….

In the earthquake’s aftermath, the lives of four strangers will converge.… Sarah Sloane, the beautiful wife of a financial whiz, watches her perfect world fall to pieces…. Grammy-winning singer Melanie Free, the event’s headliner, comes to a turning point in her life and career…. Photographer Everett Carson, a former war correspondent whose personal demons have demoted him to covering society parties, finds new purpose amid the carnage…and Sister Maggie Kent, a nun who normally works in jeans and high-tops with the homeless, searches through the rubble–and knows instantly that there is much work to be done….

As the city staggers back to life, a chain reaction of extraordinary events will touch each of the survivors.… For Sarah, it begins with the discovery of a crime and a betrayal, then a strength she never knew she had. For Melanie, volunteering at a refugee camp will open new worlds of possibility. And Everett will be shaken by the unlikely relationship he forges with Maggie, who helps him rebuild his shattered life–and upends her own in the process. But as a year passes, and the anniversary of the earthquake approaches, more surprises are in store–as each discovers the unexpected gifts in a tragedy’s wake…and the amazing grace of new beginnings.

Throughout these enthralling pages, Danielle Steel creates a stunning array of contrasts–from the dazzle of a society benefit to the chaos of a makeshift hospital, from the pampered lives of rock stars to the quiet heroism of emergency volunteers. It is her most powerful and life-affirming novel to date.

Publishers Weekly

With Bungalow 2still on bestseller lists, Steel checks in with a Bay Area earthquake that shakes up the lives of three beautiful, talented yet somehow unfulfilled women. Sarah Sloane, 30-something wife of Seth, a wildly successful hedge fund entrepreneur, and mother of two, has planned to perfection a high-ticket charity auction. The only thing she hasn't counted on is the biggest seismic event to hit San Francisco since 1906 and the aftershocks it will cause in her marriage. Meanwhile, hot Grammy-winning 19-year-old singer Melanie Free, flown in to perform at the benefit, likewise finds her life overturned: following an on-stage triumph, Melanie throws away her platform shoes to assist disaster victims, admitting-much to the annoyance of her pushy stage mother and her TV actor boyfriend-that she always wanted to be a nurse. Sarah and Melanie face change with support from the 40-ish Sister Maggie Kent, a California nun whose good deeds draw the interest of recovering alcoholic and former AP photojournalist Everett Carson, who captures her in pictures. As marriage, faith and vows of chastity are tested, there's nothing complicated to spoil the romance. Steel delivers a sparkly story with an uplifting spiritual twist. (Oct.)