Five Days Left
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“A beautifully drawn study of what is at risk when you lose control of your own life. Unique, gripping, and viscerally moving—this impressive debut novel heralds the arrival of an extremely talented writer.” —Jodi Picoult, New York Times–bestselling author of Leaving Time
Destined to be a book club favorite, a heart-wrenching debut about two people who must decide how much they’re willing to sacrifice for love.
Mara Nichols is a successful lawyer, devoted wife, and adoptive mother who has received a life-shattering diagnosis. Scott Coffman, a middle school teacher, has been fostering an eight-year-old boy while the boy’s mother serves a jail sentence. Scott and Mara both have five days left until they must say good-bye to the ones they love the most.
Through their stories, Julie Lawson Timmer explores the individual limits of human endurance and the power of relationships, and shows that sometimes loving someone means holding on, and sometimes it means letting go.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This starkly intimate epistolary novel that follows the diaries of two parents one a dying mother, the other a foster dad dissects the experiences of losing hope and finding strength. Mara, declining precipitously from Huntington's disease, makes final preparations for adored adopted daughter Lakshmi, loving husband Tom, doting parents, and best friends Steph and Gina all with the help of a lost-soul cabbie looking for redemption. Meanwhile, Scott has been an adoptive father for his inner-city foster son, Curtis, but Curtis's biological mother will be released from prison in five days. Scott and his wife, Laurie, are preparing for the upcoming birth of a daughter but his life is thrown into chaos when a tragic turn of events forces him to choose between Curtis and the imagined peace of life without him. Timmell makes a powerful debut with these tautly drawn parallel dramas: Mara decides to cut short a decline she believes will destroy her family, and Scott risks his marriage to give Curtis a future.
