Susan Glenn Lampe's world shifts in 2006, when her father's illness summons her back to her hometown of Decatur, Illinois, from the Pacific Northwest. She finds her father on the mend, but his illness unmasks the hidden diagnosis of her mother's dementia. Sensing the end is near, Susan confronts her about their relationship. The author secretly calls her mother 'The Dragon.'

Throughout the following eight years, the two Glenn children struggle to keep their aging parents comfortable while they downsize their unwieldy estate. While Susan sorts through the last of her parents' possessions she's still haunted by the question: did my mother truly love me? Unexpected answers are unearthed in a shoebox filled with letters written by her parents in l945. The trove illuminates the lives of the young couple, Clarence and Adele Glenn, who were newly married but separated by war. Adele awaits the birth of their first child in Chicago while Clarence floats as a ship's doctor aboard an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. All of their lives hang on the outcome of World War II.

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