Purchased from the Green Valley branch of the Henderson library system today.

This one grew on me. Initially I was put off a bit by the number of characters, particularly because the point of view switches from one to another (although always written in the third person). The primary character, however, is Willa, "somebody else's daughter".

Nate and Cat had given Willa up for adoption seventeen years earlier, asking the new parents to keep her name. In an unusual arrangement, Nate and Cat drove from their home in San Francisco to the Berkshires to bring the baby personally to her adoptive parents.

Always curious about how his daughter was faring, Nate takes advantage of an opportunity to spend a year in the Berkshires, teaching writing in a school where he would actually be able to see Willa. He gets his wish and more.

Meanwhile, Claire Squire and her son Teddy move into the area, into an old house owned by her father, who had recently died. Teddy enters the school, his tuition paid by his grandfather before he died.

And the school is headed by someone new, mysteriously moved from another school after an incident he and his wife would rather forget.

All of these characters and more are revealed by their actions and their thinking, as relationships among them begin to form. And as an ugly seam splits the fragile fabric of this special place.

Inside the box!