Parting Gifts - by Katrina Anne Willis (Paperback)

About the Book

In the wake of a devastating family loss, each of the adult Mathers sisters--Catherine, Anne, and Jessica--must reevaluate her relationships, her purpose, and her worth.

Book Synopsis

Broken by their unorthodox Midwestern childhood, sisters Catherine, Anne, and Jessica Mathers search for love, acceptance, and worth--often in the most unlikely places. Catherine, the oldest of the Mathers sisters, is an English professor battling breast cancer with Cytoxan, red wine, and profanity. Anne is a wife and stay-at-home mother of two struggling to make ends meet in a suburban existence that both suffocates and confounds her. Jessica, the youngest by ten years and estranged--by choice--from her family, is an exotic dancer who feels safer on stage than in a relationship. But when the sisters are faced with an incomprehensible loss, they are forced to reevaluate themselves, their damaged bonds, and their fragile future. Parting Gifts illuminates one highly dysfunctional family's tentative, desperate crawl toward a life of meaning and worth.

Review Quotes

2016 USA Best Book Awards: General Fiction, Finalist
2016 USA Best Book Awards: Literary Fiction, Finalist
"Katrina Willis can take a painful experience and offer enlightenment. She can take a hardship and reveal opportunity. She can describe deep despair and make you feel hopeful. How? Through her extraordinary gift of detail and language . . . through her brave willingness to go where others dare not go . . . through her heart that feels deeply and fully. Unlike any author I've ever read, Willis transports me into a moment so I can see, hear, taste, and feel it as if I am there. And when I am lost in one of her stories, I don't want to come back. Because through her stories, I am healed. I am understood. I am fully alive." --Rachel Macy Stafford, New York Times best-selling author of Hands Free Mama
"In Parting Gifts, Willis paints the portrait of three sisters with careful and exacting strokes. All three women are seeking to overcome their own personal and shared tragedies, and you will become attached to each one of them as they make their way back home to each other." --T. Greenwood, author of Two Rivers, Bodies of Water, and The Forever Bridge
"Parting Gifts is a rare treasure, the sort of book that leaves the reader attached to the characters long after finishing the final page. Katrina Anne Willis has painted a family portrait, intricate, and real, capturing what it means to be family, what it means to struggle with both our need to belong, and our need to be set free. Parting Gifts cracked my heart open, and reminded me of what it means to be human. I loved this book." --Karen Lynch, author of Good Cop, Bad Daughter: Memoirs of an Unlikely Police Officer

About the Author

Katrina Anne Willis, 2011 Midwest Writers Fellow and 2015 BlogHer Voice of the Year, is an author, blogger, and essayist. An Indianapolis Listen to Your Mother participant and contributor to Mamalode magazine, her work has been anthologized in Nothing but the Truth So Help Me God: 73 Women On Life's Transitions (Nothing but the Truth Publishing, 2014) and My Other Ex: Women's True Stories of Leaving and Losing Friends (HerStories Project Press, 2014). She was awarded the 2014 Parenting Media Association's Gold Medal Blogger Award for her work with Indy's Child magazine. Willis lives in Northwest Ohio with the love of her life, Chris, and her four fabulous teenagers, Sam, Gus, Mary Claire, and George. Learn more at www.katrinaannewillis.com.