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.