The Things We Save

Book excerpt: A broken 45 rpm record held together with adhesive tape, a fading stack of Polaroids, a cobalt blue perfume bottle, and a braid of human hair … these are just some of the things Claire Sokol keeps stashed in an old Marshall Field's gift box. But how did they get there and what do they signify? If these relics could talk, what stories would they tell? The tale of a child torn between the bitter sermons of a troubled, troublesome mother and the honeyed praise of the beautiful, sophisticated woman who just might be her fairy godmother? Of an innocent girl and boy lost in a dark, forbidding forest of adult lies and deceit? Of a young woman fighting to save a beloved father from his worst enemy – himself? Of a young man's death, a tragedy from which to flee or a mystery to finally solve? The Things We Save tells the story of the ways, both subtle and brutal, that a family falls apart and the intimate struggle to put what remains back together. It asks provocative questions about the nature of love, the corrosive effects of envy and guilt, and the limits of forgiveness. The Things We Save is for anyone who has ever slammed out a door with the vow to never return, only to find his or her way back home again.