Fault Line is Jo-Ann's first published work, a collection of thirteen short stories. Chloe Morgan and Henry Oliver, soon to star in Jo-Ann's next work, Hank & Chloe, make their debut in two stories, "Geographics" and "Figures from a Funeral Procession". Similarly, Lillie and Rose, the siblings later to be chronicled in The Wilder Sisters, are introduced in a series of stories as the Greenbroke Sisters; "greenbroke" being the horse training term for an animal so newly tamed as to be entirely unpredictable. "The Red Nightie Network" won the 1986 California Short Story Competition sponsored by The Nob Hill Gazette, and ushered Jo-Ann into the electronic age with the first prize of a "portable" Kaypro computer.