What We Leave Behind: A Novel

From the author of Summer Hours at the Robbers Library, a tenderhearted work of contemporary women's fiction about 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.

It's 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 family 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 emotional inheritance 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 Melody's 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 we're born into and the kind we create.