I am mightily intrigued by Katharine Weber's Triangle, based on the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire that killed 146 employees in NYC. Weber has writtn a couple of recent pieces for the NYT's based on her book - the first on child workers and the second on her family's connection to the fire (and reason why she wrote about it).

I read Weber's very modern take on Little Women several years ago and I thought it was well done and a very nice way to spend the afternoon. With this new book though she is really appealing to things I love to read about - there's a great historical event with the fire but by making the book fiction she brings into play modern figures who are trying to learn the truth about their family's involvement in the tragedy. I love the idea of searching through your grandmother's history - of finding out if what she always said was true or if it was just easier to accept it as such. My own family is full of this sort of thing (every family is) and I've played a bit with old old stories in the YA fantasy I'm working on. There is an irrsistible notion to the idea that people you thought you knew so well - stories you thought you knew so well - might in fact be fiction after all.

And then of course you have to wonder, who exactly does that make you?

I'm going to be looking for this book for sure. I really think Weber is doing something interesting here, and I trust her enough to believe that it's going to be a great reading experience to see where she goes.