She serves as author liaison for Field's End, a literary community on Bainbridge Island, Washington, bringing inspiration and instruction from the world's top authors to her seaside community. She lives at the water's edge on an island in Puget Sound, and she commutes to her writers' group in a 17-foot motorboat. Susan Wiggs's life is all about family, friends.and fiction. But as the pain, regrets and mistakes of the past slowly rise to the surface, a new picture emerges a picture filled with hope and promise and the redeeming power of the human heart. As Jessie and Luz examine the true meaning of love, loyalty and family, they are drawn into an emotional tug-of-war filled with moments of unexpected humor, surprising sweetness and unbearable sadness. Now the choice she makes will affect the life of her daughter and challenge the meaning of sisterhood.

She is leaving behind the only life she knows and leaping blindly into the unknown. Though she aches to reach out to those she loves, Jessie stands at the crossroads. And Jessie begins to see the hopeful possibilities that lie buried in the most wrenching tragedies. She meets Dustin Matlock, a young father who has survived a devastating loss. Then, just as Jessie comes to terms with the past, life's bittersweet irony plays its hand. As Luz and her husband struggle with what Jessie's return may mean to the rebellious Lila, their seemingly solid marriage falters. Like a Technicolor tornado bursting into Luz's picture-perfect life, Jessie returns to her Texas hometown with a shattering request. Now, facing a life-altering crisis, she's decided to fix the broken pieces of her heart and seek out Lila, even if it means she has to upset the world of Lila's adoptive mother her very own sister, Luz.

But she's never traveled far enough to escape a painful moment that has haunted her for the past sixteen years: the day she gave her baby daughter away. In her career as a photojournalist, free-spirited Jessie Ryder has seen the world through her camera lens.

Home before dark kindle