In this 2016 New York Times Notable Book of the Year from one of our favorite authors at Daedalus (ever since her Pulitzer Prize winner Olive Kitteridge), Elizabeth Strout illuminates the tender relationship between mother and daughter. As Lucy Barton recovers slowly from what should have been a simple operation, her mother sits at her bedside, reminiscing about people Lucy knew in Amgash, Illinois, before she went off to college and never returned. The power of this extraordinary story is what remains unsaid between the lines of gentle gossip, and what Lucy fills in for the reader about her troubled family origins, her becoming a writer, her marriage, and her love for her own two daughters.