In The Broken Places, Frances Peck offers a Canadian variant on the disaster narrative. The place is Vancouver, the time contemporary. On a gorgeous morning in May, an earthquake wrecks the city. It’s not quite “The Big One,” but big enough to cause widespread devastation and make headlines around the globe. The story the earthquake unleashes brings us into intimate contact with an ensemble cast of seven characters: a family of three (the Stedmans), a gay couple, and a nurse and her elderly patient (a dementia sufferer) who happen to be out for a walk. Peck’s people—some of whom are likable and sympathetic, others not so much—begin the day in their separate spheres. Tensions seem to be high all around, a situation brought about by secrets some have been harbouring, smouldering resentments, unspoken desires, various manifestations of mistrust, and frustration that’s been long percolating and is now approaching the boiling point. From the moment the earthquake hits, Peck’s narrative moves briskly and seamlessly across the individual perspectives. The family home of the Stedmans, where five of the characters end up, becomes the focal point of the action. Peck also takes advantage of the external perspectives of the two characters who are not there, providing the reader with a broader picture of the prevailing chaos and how emergency crews are grappling with a tragedy of colossal proportions. Throughout, Peck’s writing has a cinematic immediacy that, as the scene shifts, quickly immerses the reader in each character’s troubled psyche, revealing secret passions and deepest fears. It turns out that everyone here was shattered by loss, damaged, or otherwise wounded long before the disaster. Suspenseful and bursting with high drama, The Broken Places, is also a thoughtful, intelligent novel. By exposing her characters to extremes of danger and stress, Peck demonstrates the human capacity for compassion and craven self-interest in equal measure. Some characters are privileged, others not, but an earthquake doesn’t care: in an instant it levels the field, rendering everyone vulnerable, regardless of income level or social standing. In the end we are all human, we can all be broken. We can survive too, but if only we put ego to one side and accept our differences as strengths. ( )