What We Leave Behind
A Novel
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The lukewarm latest from Halpern (What We Leave Behind) follows two women struggling to maintain their sense of self during a time of upheaval. Melody, 17, has just lost her adoptive mother in a freak car accident. Her father, Eddie, is paralyzed by grief, leaving Melody to mourn in her own way. Having lived in foster care as a young girl, she's angry at the lack of clarity about her origins. She rebels, threatening to forgo college to work on an organic farm. A parallel narrative centers on 40-something Candace, an unmarried HR professional. When her company moves from New York City to Connecticut, she buys a house where she hosts Thanksgiving with friends, during which a guest rescues her neighbor, Tom, after he falls through the ice on a nearby pond. As Candace and Tom become friends and discover a romantic spark, she's forced to confront the limits of her desire for independence. Conveniently, Tom and Eddie were college buddies, so Halpern manages to link Melody's and Candace's stories. Halpern is a master wordsmith, but the narrative itself offers few surprises. This fails to make much of an impact.
