David B. Seaburn uses his extensive experience with individuals and families coping with medical and psychiatric illness to create a memorable story about one manas search for truth at the heart of tragedy. Randall is a middle-aged man who has spent his life trying to preserve the memory of the mother he lost as a young boy. At the same time, he struggles with the fact that he lives with the person he suspects of killing herahis alcoholic father. Tormented by both grief and failed opportunities, Randall finds himself in a psychiatric hospital piecing together the meaning of his life after an attempted suicide. Upon his return home, Randall discovers that his father is dying of cancer and that now he must care for him. On this final journey, Randall learns what really happened to his mother, and in the process both men discover light emerging from the darkness of their lives.