Beauty, Love, and A Fall of Marigolds

I have anticipated this post for a very long time! It was A Fall of Marigolds that first gave me a love for marigolds, therefore sparking the idea to name this blog. Not only that, it is one of the most profoundly written stories I have read. It’s about time I write something up about it for my blog!

It is a beautiful historical fiction book, full of rich emotion and deep questions. If you have never read it before (or maybe are hoping to again) this is your encouragement to do so! Next week is 9/11, and since the Attacks of September 11 is one of the settings of the book now is a wonderful time to read it.

A Fall of Marigolds, by Susan Meissner

Everything beautiful has a story it wants to tell

This is the motto for the fabric store Taryn works at. But she knows that just because something beautiful has a story does not mean that story will be beautiful. She knows this from her own life. Ten years ago she lost her husband in the Attacks of September 11, leaving her a single mother struggling to raise a child and learn to love life again.

Clara (living in the early 1900s) has a similar story. Her loss was a result of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire where she lost someone she had dreamed of loving. Since then she has been living at Ellis Island, a place where she is living between mourning and truth.

Each woman is still living in their past regrets and sorrows when things begin to show up in their lives, reminders of their heartache. Showing up in the middle of both their stories is a scarf, glowing of bright orange marigolds that hint at something beautiful. They must choose to reveal the truths of their suffering, or hide away from them forever, never knowing what might have been.

An Everlasting Love

I want you to know that love is not a person. It is not of this earth at all. It wasn't until now that I realized I had mistakenly come to believe that love came from a place inside me and therefore I had to protect that place. It comes from heaven, Eleanor. It is given to us not to hold onto or to hide from, but to give away.
-p. 362-363

A Fall of Marigolds is an unbelievably tragic book in which two women experience love and then lose it in the worst possible way. They wrestle with emotions and regrets and fears until they shut out any love in their lives that will cause them this heartache again.

Love appears in our lives in many ways. It doesn’t have to be in the form of romance like in the book, but maybe as a friend. But love can hurt. Love for others can cause pain if that person dies or a friendship ends. But that is to be expected. As Susan Meissner says in the back of the book, “It’s quite possible that loving flawed people in an equally flawed world is going to subject you to the worst kind of heartache.”

But the brilliant testimony of this book is that love is not in vain. It may hurt us to love, but it does not have to destroy us. Because love is not from this earth. It is not something we have designed, but something God has given us. Love is the center of the gospel. For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son. God is love.

Best of all, God’s love is not fragile or temporary as love in this world is. His love is the fulfillment of our lives. As believers, we have the hope that the love of this earth is just a shallow reflection of heaven. And that love is eternal.

A Note on Marigolds

Marigolds are a central thread of this book. It’s the marigold scarf that the story is woven around, connecting the lives of Clara and Taryn in ways they can’t know. Later in the book we learn about the meaning behind that flower. That they are resilient. That they can stand against the odds. That they bloom when other flowers have given up.

Almost without you realizing it, this has become a theme of both women’s stories. They have survived terrible heartache and numbing pain. And they remember how to stand up again. A Fall of Marigolds is not just a story of tragedy and death, but of the beauty underneath even that.

Final Thoughts

To sum up this post I would like to quote a verse out of Ecclesiastes that I think best fits this story.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end.
-Ecclesiastes 3:11

This is such a wonderful verse that really makes you stop and ponder its meaning. I hope that whether you have read A Fall of Marigolds yet or not you will pause and think about this verse and the beautiful timing of God today. His ways are higher than ours, and though we may never know the whys or hows, we can rest assured that God’s love is undefeatable and true. It is greater and more beautiful than we can imagine.

That’s all for today. but I really want to encourage you to read A Fall of Marigolds if you have not already. It truly is a life changing story. If you have read it, let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear about your experience!