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Holland's most popular Christian fiction writer offers her first novel in an elegant English translation, telling the story of Ika Boerema, a Dutch landscape designer who has fled a childhood scarred by the shame of her illegitimate birth and loveless parents. She is abruptly pulled back into this emotional past by a letter informing her of her mother's impending death. Ika must confront years of emotional neglect and pain in facing her family again and making peace with her mother and with herself. Verweerd dances back and forth between the present and poignant flashbacks to Ika's childhood, which tantalizingly disclose why she fled her family. Her memories gradually reveal her parents' blatant favoritism for Ika's younger sister, her stepfather's constant criticism, her mother's cool distance and her grandfather's obsession with sin.