When her black sheep brother disappears, Amanda Janvier eagerly takes in her sixteen year-old niece Tally. The girl is practically an orphan: motherless, and living with a father who raises Tally wherever he lands in a Buick, a pizza joint, a horse farm and regularly takes off on wild schemes. Amanda envisions that she, her husband Neil, and their two teenagers can offer the girl stability and a shot at a normal life, even though their own storybook lives are about to crumble.

Seventeen-year-old Chase Janvier hasn t seen his cousin in years, and other than a vague curiosity about her strange life, he doesn t expect her arrival will affect him much or interfere with his growing, disturbing interest in a long-ago house fire that plagues his dreams unbeknownst to anyone else.

Tally and Chase bond as they interview two Holocaust survivors for a sociology project, and become startlingly aware that the whole family is grappling with hidden secrets, with the echoes of the past, and with the realization that ignoring tragic situations won t make them go away.

Will Tally s presence blow apart their carefully-constructed world, knocking down the illusion of the white picket fence and reveal a hidden past that could destroy them all or can she help them find the truth without losing each other?

שם הספר
Blue Heart Blessed
The Shape of Mercy: A Novel
White Picket Fences: A Novel
The Shape of Mercy (Thorndike Christian Fiction)