An exquisitely moving portrait of an elderly man's struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family's efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go.

By age 50, Elin Boals has created for herself a perfect life: her wildly successful business as Manhattan's preeminent fashion photographer is flourishing. Her handsome, patient husband is devoted to her; her teenaged daughter, Alice, has been accepted to the ballet academy of her dreams. But then Elin receives an innocuous looking envelope. Folded inside is a star-chart, with an address written by a familiar hand. Shaken, Elin begins to have startling...

"Grandma is reading from a diary. Lissy listens intently to the exciting stories. But . . . who are these stories actually about?" -- Back cover.

Katerina inherits a scented, wooden spice box after her grandmother Mariam dies. It contains letters and a diary, written in Armenian. As she pieces together her family story, Katerina learns that Mariam's childhood was shattered by the Armenian genocide of 1915. Mariam was exiled from her home in Turkey and separated from her beloved brother, Gabriel, her life marred by grief and the loss of her first love. Dissatisfied and restless, Katerina tries...

An old man reminisces about his first love, a young runaway who taught him more about life than anyone had before or since.

As Olivia 'Lovie' Rutledge sits on the porch of her charming beach house and looks out over the ocean, the old woman reflects on the difficult choices she made in many years earlier - during the summer that changed her life.

A proud, uncompromising woman, Harriet's great passion is collecting butterflies and pinning them under glass; motherhood comes no easier to her than her role as mistress of her remote Irish estate. When her daughter dies, her community is quick to judge her, and Harriet will not stoop to defend herself. But her journals reveal a more complex truth.