What it means to be a mother, what it takes to save a life.

Lucy never confessed her love to her best friend, Harlan, before he passed away. Two months after his funeral, she is haunted by the power of things left unsaid. But then she receives the first of his e-mails arranged to be sent after his death. So begins the year that everything changes—Lucy’s watershed year.

In an e-mail, Harlan says something that consumes her: he’s certain Lucy is destined for motherhood. In her grief, Lucy suddenly rediscovers hope, journeying to Russia to adopt a four-year-old boy. When she meets her son, Mat, for the first time, she realizes he is also mending a wounded heart and is just as lost as she is. Together, they learn to trust, each helping the other to heal.

But just as they’re welcoming their new normal, Mat’s father comes to America to reclaim his son, revealing the truth about Mat’s past that might shatter Lucy’s fragile little family forever.

Susan Schoenberger’s breathtaking and powerful story of love, loss, redemption, and what it means to be a mother will leave you in awe as Lucy, in the depths of her greatest despair, somehow finds her greatest joy and embraces the beauty of second chances.