The award-winning novel, Estate: To my once darling child, speaks to anyone navigating the unfinished business of family. It is a novel of transitions: between generations, from love to resentment and back again, from a murky past toward a brighter future. Reality fiction at its best. Unflinching, compassionate, demanding, but true.

Timothy Watts is the eldest son and a lover of order. His mother’s dying promise of an 'easy and kinda fun' estate is the final disorder. The seas of stuff, the probate rules, the warring siblings, and his mother’s ghost swamp the lives of Tim, Janice, Violet, Jaden, and Ethan. All while the emotional inheritance unravels what they know of themselves and their family.

Kirkus Reviews declares Estate a GET IT! An “...oddly enjoyable novel about an unenviable and convoluted legal process... Shelley proves himself to be an exceptional novelist…”