From her first poignant sentences, Jenn Crowell beckons the reader into Gloria Burgess's private world. After a scant eight years of marriage, Gloria's beloved husband succumbs to leukemia, leaving her alone with a son to bring up in an adopted country. The madness of grief is a constant, voracious temptation she must withstand, for her child's sake not her own. To accomplish this, Gloria delves into the lessons from the past and her parents' failed relationship. Her father was forever inconsolable over his dead first love, her mother bitter at giving up her ambitions for a man incapable of loving her. Between her father's clinging, drowning despair and her mother's emotional abandonment is a balance that Gloria struggles to find. And eventually she discovers ways to reinvent herself, to find happiness once again, and to bring peace back to the tumult of her life.

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