What readers think of The Promise, plus links to write your own review.

Riveting. Captivating. Spellbinding. Entrancing. Get the idea? This short, can't-put-it-down novel by Ann Weisgarber will grab you at page one and not let go. This is the kind of book that will make you forgo sleep, housework and other responsibilities. Just one more page. (Yeah, right...like you could stop after just one more page.)

It's 1900. Catherine Wainwright of Dayton, Ohio has been caught in a horrific scandal of such magnificent proportions that she is shunned by proper society and forced to flee. Even her mother is appalled by her only child's behavior. So Catherine writes a letter to Oscar, a boy she knew as a young girl--a working class boy who left Dayton to build a new life in Galveston, Texas. Oscar had always admired her from afar. It just so happens that Oscar, now a widower with a 5-year-old son, needs a wife. And Catherine needs to escape. A train ride across the country, a quickie wedding by a judge, and the two strangers begin their new life together in Oscar's tiny house on the island of Galveston.

The story is told in the first person alternating between Catherine and Nan Ogden, who was a dear friend of Oscar's first wife and who now keeps house for Oscar and his son. There are a series of storms. The inner storms that Catherine and Oscar suffer individually, the storm of the first days of their hasty marriage, the storm going on inside Nan and finally the biggest storm of all: The September 8, 1900 hurricane that is still the worst natural disaster ever to hit the United States.

Just one more page...and you'll finish this book, wiping tears from your eyes.

Our book club chose this book because we enjoyed the author's first book "The Personal History of Rachel Dupree." She didn't disappoint. Loved the story, the characters and the imagery. It has romance, history, and drama! I highly recommend this book to both individuals as well as book clubs. It is not often everyone in our group is in agreement.

If you are looking a book long description of the devastating hurricane of 1900 and its aftermath, this not the book for you. While an accurate and terrifying description of the storm does appear, it is brief and secondary to the love story.
If you looking for a description of life on a hardscrabble Texas farm along with a family story, this is the book for you. The book is well written and well researched. Catherine is clearly portrayed as is Oscar.
Catherine is a pianist with a problem. The man she loves is married and now everyone knows and condemns her. In a desperate effort to get a new start Catherine chooses to marry Oscar, a man she hasn’t seen in years, and start a new life in Galvaston, Texas in August of 1900.