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 auction. 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.... n the earthquake's aftermath, the lives of four strangers will converge...Sarah Sloane, the beautiful wife of a financial star, watches her perfect world fall to pieces...Grammy-winning singer Melanie Free, the event's headliner, comes to a turning point in her 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 does her best work in jeans and high-tops, searches through the rubble and knows instantly that there is much work to be done . . . s the city staggers back to life, a chain reaction of extraordinary events will touch each of the survivors.