Interrupted

Claire Benedict has built her life around certainty. As the capable right hand of her father's business and the steady presence in her church community, she knows exactly who she is and what the world expects of her. Then her father dies, and the comfortable scaffolding of her existence collapses. The family is left nearly destitute, and Claire must do something she has never done before: venture out into a world that doesn't operate on the same rules of her sheltered life. Written by Isabella Alden under the pen name Pansy, this 1895 novel traces one woman's reckoning with vulnerability, the limits of her own strength, and what it means to keep faith when everything familiar has been stripped away. It's a story about what happens when the life you planned gets interrupted, and whether you can find solid ground on the other side.