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....In 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 . . .As the city staggers back to life, a chain reaction of extraordi