When Frank and Ellie Benton lose their only child, seven-year-old Benny, to a sudden illness, the perfect life they had built is shattered. Filled with wrenching memories, their Ann Arbor home becomes unbearable, and their marriage founders. Then an unexpected job half a world away in Girbaug, India, offers them an opportunity to start again. But Frank’s befriending of Ramesh—a bright, curious boy who quickly becomes the focus of his attentions—will lead the grieving man down an ever-darkening path with stark repercussions.
A devastating look at cultural clashes and divides, Thrity Umrigar’s The Weight of Heaven is a rare glimpse of a family and a country struggling under pressures beyond their control.
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A heart-wrenching, powerfully written novel that could do for Palestine what The Kite Runner did for Afghanistan.
Mornings in Jenin is a multi-generational story about a Palestinian family. Forcibly removed from the olive-farming village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejos are displaced to live in canvas tents in the Jenin refugee camp. We follow the Abulhejo family as they live through a half century of violent history. Amidst the loss and fear, hatred and pain, as their tents are replaced by more forebodingly permanent cinderblock huts,
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From New York Times bestselling author A. Manette Ansay comes an unforgettable story of two families united by tragedy—and one woman’s deeply emotional journey toward a choice she’d never thought possible.
On an ordinary morning in Fox Harbor, Wisconsin, Meg and Rex Van Dorn’s lives are irrevocably altered when a drunk driver — Meg’s onetime best friend, Cindy Ann Kreisler — slams into the Van Dorns’ car, killing their six-year-old son, Evan. As Meg recovers from her own injuries, she and Rex are shocked when Cindy Ann receives a mere slap on the wrist. In their rage and grief,
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Justin Fisher has a successful career as the manager of a luxury hotel, a lovely wife, and a charming young son. While all signs point to a bright future, Justin can no longer ignore the hole in his life left by his estranged family. When he finally gathers the courage to reconnect with his troubled past, Justin is devastated to learn that his parents have passed away. And a visit to the cemetery brings the greatest shock of all—next to the graves of his father and mother sits a smaller tombstone for a three-year-old boy: a boy named Thomas Justin Fisher.
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From the day Cobb and Mary meet kayaking on Maine’s Allagash River and fall deeply in love, the two approach life with the same sense of adventure they use to conquer the river’s treacherous rapids. But rivers do not let go so easily…and neither does their love. So when Mary’s life takes the cruelest turn, she vows to face those rough waters on her own terms and asks Cobb to promise, when the time comes, to help her return to their beloved river for one final journey.
Set against the rugged wilderness of Maine, the exotic islands of Indonesia,
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Married and the father of a young daughter, John Bevan had finally found the traditional family he lacked as an orphaned child. But all that disappears when a fatal car accident steals away his wife-and the unborn child she carried.
Filled with sorrow, John withdraws from life and love. He erects a small cross at the scene of his wife’s accident and visits daily, grieving. Then one morning he encounters a young man kneeling before the cross, touching it up with white paint. John’s conversations and travels with this mysterious man-known to him only as the Cross Gardener-will forever change his world.
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