When Angie is awakened by a midnight call from an officer with the Boise Police Department, she thinks there must be a misunderstanding. The officer tells her that her husband was involved in a shooting at a local bar, but how can that be possible when her husband is sleeping right next to her? Except when she turns to wake him, he isn’t there.
Tessa is the twenty-three-year-old bartender who escapes to a backroom storage closet during the shooting. When it comes to light that five people were killed, she is burdened with the question of why she survived.
Joyce wakes up to a knock at her front door, a knock she assumes is her wayward son, Jed, who must have lost his keys. It’s not Jed, though. Two police officers tell her that Jed is dead, shot at the bar. Then they deliver even worse news: “We have reason to believe your son was the shooter.”
So begins the story of three women tied together by tragic fate―a wife trying to understand why her now-comatose husband was frequenting a bar in the middle of the night, the young woman who her husband was apparently pursuing, and a mother who is forced to confront the reality of who her son was and who she is.
Emily Morris got her happily-ever-after earlier than most. Married at a young age to a man she loved passionately, she was building the life she always wanted. But when enormous stress threatened her marriage, Emily made some rash decisions. That's when she fell in love with someone else. That's when she got pregnant. Resolved to tell her husband of the affair and to leave him for the father of her child, Emily's plans are thwarted when the world is suddenly split open on 9/11. It's amid terrible tragedy that she finds her freedom, leaving New York City to start a new life. It's not easy, but Emily-now Connie Prynne?forges a new happily-ever-after in California. But when a life-threatening diagnosis upends everything, she is forced to rethink her life for the good of her thirteen-year-old daughter.
A couple brimming with the hope of a new pregnancy. A woman coming to terms with the truth behind her adoption. A husband trying to save his marriage from the despair of infertility. These are just a few of the stories in All the Acorns on the Forest Floor, a book about the lengths we'll go to for the love of our children, our spouses, our mothers, our daughters. All the Acorns on the Forest Floor is a book of connections between people, connections lost and found, across time and space. There are stories of women who never became mothers (by choice or by fate), women who became mothers in unexpected or nontraditional ways, and women who gave up or lost babies. There are emotional aftershocks with each character's personal earthquake, aftershocks that shake their lives and force them to consider who they are, what they want, and how they love. Bonus chapters from Kim Hooper's next book, There's No Hiding in Boise, are included at the end of this audiobook.
Nate and Annie Forester are faced with every parent's worst nightmare when their three-year-old daughter, Penelope, is hit by a car right before their eyes. In the aftermath of her death, the distance between them grows.
Josh, twenty-two years old-third party to the nightmare-was behind the wheel on the fateful day Penny ran into the middle of the street. Unable to stop thinking about Nate and Annie, Josh has started to stalk them, thinking up ways to approach them and apologize. One morning, he is sitting in his car, in front of their house, when he sees Annie leave, suitcase in tow. Hours later, he witnesses Nate in a frenzy of worry. His wife has disappeared and he is left only with a vague note.
Tiny follows the harrowing journeys of Nate, Annie, and Josh-three people unwillingly tied together by tragedy. There is Nate, staying strong on the surface, but slowly losing his mind as he faces the suspicions of Annie's family and the police in the wake of Annie's disappearance. There is Annie, attempting to start a secret brand new life in a 100-square-foot house in the middle of nowhere. And there is Josh, who desperately wants forgiveness and, ultimately, finds himself responsible for reuniting the people whose lives he changed forever.
From the author of the critically acclaimed debut People Who Knew Me comes the story of one man's determination to abandon his will to live.
Jonathan Krause is a man with a plan. He is going to quit his advertising job and, when his money runs out, he is going to die. He just has one final mission: A trip to Japan. It's a trip he was supposed to take with his girlfriend, Sara. It's a trip inspired by his regrets. And it's a trip to pay homage to the Japanese, the inventors of his chosen suicide technique.
In preparation for his final voyage, Jonathan enrolls in a Japanese language class where he meets Riko, who has her own plans to visit her homeland, for very different reasons. Their unexpected and unusual friendship takes them to Japan together, where they each struggle to make peace with their past and accept that happiness, loneliness, and grief come and go-just like the cherry blossoms.
Haunted by lost love, Jonathan must decide if he can embrace the transient nature of life, or if he must choose the certainty of death.
Everything was fine fourteen years after she left New York.
Until suddenly, one day, it wasn't.
Emily Morris got her happily-ever-after earlier than most. Married at a young age to a man she loved passionately, she was building the life she always wanted. But when enormous stress threatened her marriage, Emily made some rash decisions. That's when she fell in love with someone else. That's when she got pregnant.
Resolved to tell her husband of the affair and to leave him for the father of her child, Emily's plans are thwarted when the world is suddenly split open on 9/11. It's amid terrible tragedy that she finds her freedom, as she leaves New York City to start a new life. It's not easy, but Emily---now Connie Prynne, forges a new happily-ever-after in California. But when a life-threatening diagnosis upends her life, she is forced to rethink her life for the good of her thirteen-year-old daughter.
A riveting debut in which a woman must confront her own past in order to secure the future of her daughter, Kim Hooper's People Who Knew Me asks: "What would you do?"
