He was dead. No doubt about it. Now Denise Bennett was faced with the rescue of six small children, many of whom had been seriously burned. Detroit on Christmas morning, 1958. Children were unwrapping Christmas packages, looking for long-sought gifts of special meaning when the unthinkable happened. Who knew that they would all face death when the furnace exploded? Faced with recovering life and family in the absence of the breadwinner, Denise would set her life aside and devote many years to their recovery. In the process, she nearly lost control of her own life, making one radical misstep after another. Driven to exasperation by a domineering mother, she finds herself living with a major medical condition called PTSD, operating on the wrong side of the law, and finally, disappearing into anonymity. It was just as she wished.