The Gifts We KeepThe Gifts We Keep

Emerson Worthy is both smart and successful, with an ordered life she has carefully crafted since her husband's suicide a decade past. When she reluctantly agrees to care for Addie, a young Native Alaskan girl, she discovers she must seek help from the family she's kept at arm's length for years, and returns to the big home on Looking Lake and all her memories there. Her sister Tillie, the gardener, the artist, still has unspoken questions about the teenage accident with Emerson that claimed her legs from the knee down. Their aging mother Eve spreads her joy for life indiscriminately and wonders how she could ever have failed her daughters. Their neighbor Henry, the handsome sculptor, has his own silent history with Emerson, and knows more than he's telling about her husband's suicide. And ten-year-old Addie has come into this house full of strangers, bringing her own grief over her mother's illness, and an uncanny ability to recognize the aches these grown-ups carry inside...
Emerson Worthy is both smart and successful, with an ordered life she has carefully crafted since her husband's suicide a decade past. When she reluctantly agrees to care for Addie, a young Native Alaskan girl, she discovers she must seek help from the family she's kept at arm's length for years, and returns to the big home on Looking Lake and all her memories there. Her sister Tillie, the gardener, the artist, still has unspoken questions about the teenage accident with Emerson that claimed her legs from the knee down. Their aging mother Eve spreads her joy for life indiscriminately and wonders how she could ever have failed her daughters. Their neighbor Henry, the handsome sculptor, has his own silent history with Emerson, and knows more than he's telling about her husband's suicide. And ten-year-old Addie has come into this house full of strangers, bringing her own grief over her mother's illness, and an uncanny ability to recognize the aches these grown-ups carry inside...