When Anne Edel­stein was 42, her moth­er, a capa­ble swim­mer in good health, drowned while snor­kel­ing in the Great Bar­ri­er Reef. Car­ing for two small chil­dren of her own, Anne sud­den­ly found her­self griev­ing not only for her emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant moth­er but also for her beloved younger broth­er, Dan­ny, who had killed him­self vio­lent­ly over a decade before. In a series of emo­tion­al­ly res­o­nant flash­backs, we learn about a fam­i­ly his­to­ry of trag­ic loss and how Anne’s moth­er sought to dis­tance her­self from the past by com­mit­ting her­self into her work as the esteemed prin­ci­pal of a Boston-area Hebrew School. Anne finds her­self con­fronting the fraught rela­tion­ship she has shared with her moth­er along­side her family’s lega­cy of men­tal ill­ness. Part mem­oir and part med­i­ta­tion on joy and grief, the book will res­onate with any­one who has ever strug­gled to come to terms with their par­ents, their sib­lings, their chil­dren, and their place in the world.