Amelia Geist, Holly Schenck, and Tris Holloway are all broken—in one way or another.

In a lifelong act of penitence and defiance, Amelia Geist has remained a virgin and saved herself for Tris, her first love, who abandoned her more than fifty years ago.

A few weeks from retirement, Tris Holloway has led a separate life of his own in the hills above Silicon Valley, sealed by inertia within the confines of a loveless marriage and shattered by his decision to leave Amelia.

The only person who can repair the rift between Tris and Amelia is Holly, a single mother without means, who is trying somehow to mend her life while laid out in a hospital bed, a victim of her own suicide attempt.

The stories of Tris, Holly, and Amelia are presented in Fragile as broken fragments, woven together by profound truth and an astonishing connection that transcends the boundaries between this world and the next.

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The Author

Chris Katsaropoulos is one of the founders and partners at Emergent Learning LLC, developers of educational content for major publishers. He has traveled extensively in Europe and North America, and enjoys collecting books and music. Fragile is his first novel.

Excerpt

If he concentrates, he can make out the features of her face that he once recognized, the compressed, rosebud mouth, the broad forehead, the eyebrows slightly raised, as if she always expected to be asked a question. But the skin is a shade of gray he has only seen in skies that threaten rain, and the cheeks have been rouged in a clownish attempt to hide what everyone can plainly see. The hair still clings to a remnant of the blond he remembers, but it has been flattened and shortened by death and by time. The lips are pursed shut, manipulated by the undertakers into a contour that would not dare to suggest a smile. Perhaps he had a premonition of her death, through some undefinable connection, and he has been mourning these past few days not her, but the missing part of him that was lost when he made the decision more than fifty years ago not to see her any longer--mourning the unfulfilled potential, the life he might have lived.

But who's to say he would have been any happier had he chosen to stay with her, to remain at home here in Middlesborough? Perhaps he is merely mourning the fact that he must choose, at every step in life, one place over another, one person over another, and these choices only serve to narrow him, to dwindle him down to a single straight line and, finally, to a solitary, terminating point. These choices have defined his life by constructing a set of infinite impossibilities, all the many things he will never see or have or do.

Reviews

Fragile takes us into the lives of three individuals who have based their lives on choices that they now regret having made. Amelia Geist has spent her whole life missing her first love Tris. Tris left her during a misunderstanding with her family when they were very young, fifty years ago. She spent her life honoring her vow to never love another man. Tris feels trapped in a marriage to a woman whom he no longer loves. Nearing retirement, he reflects back on what could have been if he hadn’t left Amelia. Meanwhile, Holly is wasting her life by abusing her body with alcohol and an abusive man. Her daughters suffer from this.

Holly’s life becomes linked to Tris and Amelia when she takes Amelia on as a walk-in client at the hair salon where she works. Little does she know how her life will change after this meeting occurs. When a tragedy happens, Holly finds a way to reconnect Tris to Amelia. However, it is done in an unusual manner. Holly also encounters her own wake-up call to get her life back in order.

Fragile is a beautifully written novel. It is unusually written in how the stories blend in to each other. I felt that this style of writing was very appropriate for the story; however, I also had to be careful and make sure that I stayed focused when I was reading so that I knew exactly whom I was reading about. This technique of writing was uniquely refreshing. The author also does a beautiful job of bringing both the scenes and intense emotions experienced in them to life.

After reading Fragile I found myself feeling very contemplative. The character's lives were drastically affected by decisions that they made early on. Two of them spent a lifetime of regret for having made those choices. It was sad that it had to be that way, but it was also sad that once that choice had been made, they really didn’t allow themselves to move on. This was especially true in the case of Amelia. Holly, the youngest of the three, was able to wake up and see that she had choices to make for herself. By reading this story, I thought about how many of us tie up our opportunities for a happy future based on our past decisions. I see this so many times. Reading “Fragile” was a wake-up call to me to keep myself aware that this can happen.

The spiritual component of the story added beauty to the book. I believe that readers will really enjoy reading this book and find meaning in it to be applied to their own lives. Fragile by Chris Katsaropoulos is highly recommended.

--Paige Lovitt, Reader Views

Fragile by Chris Katsaropoulos focuses on the lives of three main characters: Amelia Geist, Holly Schenck, and Tris Holloway. All are in some way broken. Amelia is an older lady who is still a virgin as she has been saving herself for Tris, the man who left her over fifty years ago. Tris is married and the decision that he made to abandon Amelia still haunts him after all of these years. Holly, who is a hairdresser with issues of her own, becomes a part of the story after Amelia comes in to get her hair done for her fiftieth high school class reunion.

The style in which the book is written is very unique. It is presented in broken fragments linking all of their lives together. At first as I was reading I got a little confused when I was reading about Amelia going in to get her hair done and then all of a sudden mid-sentence the setting changes and the book is now talking about Tris. Each time the author shifts to a different character he starts a new indented paragraph so it is easy to see when the story is going to jump somewhere else. The way that Katsaropoulos makes the transition is kind of neat as although the focus shifts mid-sentence, it flows smoothly.

Katsaropoulos does a wonderful job of developing the characters and intertwining all of their stories. The tale which he creates is intriguing and attention grabbing. If you are interested in reading a book unlike any that you have ever read before then I recommend giving this author’s first novel a try!

--Kam Aures, Rebeccasreads.com

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