What We Leave Behind: A Powerful Story of Family Secrets, Unexpected Friendships, and Belonging

ISBN: 0063415380

Author: Halpern, Sue

Condition: New

From the author of Summer Hours at the Robbers Library, a tenderhearted story of two very different women grappling with the messy emotional legacies passed down by their parents-for fans of Dani Shapiro, Ann Napolitano, and Jodi Picoult.Its the perennial question: are we a product of how we were raised, or is our identity hardwired by our genetic inheritance? When her adoptive mother dies in a freak accident, high school senior Melody Marcus doubles down on her refusal to learn anything about her birth parents. In this age of 23&me, though, that may not be possible, and the secrets hidden in her DNA threaten to upend everything she knows about herself and her family.For Candace Milton, a successful woman in her forties, the collateral damage from her parents tortured marriage has led to a life of intentional unattachment. She is happy-enough. But a chance encounter with a friend of Melodys father will challenge this assumption and force her to reimagine who she is and who she might become.Big-hearted, evocative, and achingly relatable, What We Leave Behind grapples with destiny, belonging, and love, and makes us question our own idea of family: the kind were born into and the kind we create.