Judy Man­del is the replace­ment child for her sis­ter who was killed in a trag­ic acci­dent. It would be years before she would under­stand how the event shaped her life. A plane crash­es into a fam­i­ly’s home. A two-year-old girl is crit­i­cal­ly burned and a moth­er is forced to make an impos­si­ble choice. The death of a child leaves a hole in the fam­i­ly that threat­ens to tear it apart. In a great act of hope, the par­ents give birth to a ​“replace­ment child,” born to heal wounds and pro­vide a ​“salve for the burns.” The child unwit­ting­ly plays her role through­out child­hood, rid­ing the deep and hid­den cur­rents of the fam­i­ly tragedy. Her Jew­ish fam­i­ly’s phi­los­o­phy and tra­di­tions frame their response to the tragedy, and to life. In this pow­er­ful sto­ry of love and lies, hope and for­give­ness, Judy Man­del dis­cov­ers the truth that changes her life for­ev­er and forces her to con­front the com­plex lay­ers of her rela­tion­ships with her father, moth­er, and sis­ter. When she has her own child, her epiphany comes full circle.