Rebecca Lev, a Chicago psychotherapist, is balancing a heavy workload, two demanding kids, and an unhappy second marriage?so when she learns that her father, Charlie, is in trouble, it's just one more worry to deal with. Charlie's moved into a grand home in the Bay Area with his new wife, Vicky, and Rebecca's convinced that her new stepmother is physically abusing her father?but Rebecca and Charlie have grown apart, and he rejects her offers of help. Years after marrying Vicky, Charlie dies of a cerebral hemorrhage, and Rebecca strongly suspects that his wife is implicated. Feeling guilty that she didn't better protect her father, she returns to the Bay Area to investigate, vowing to find out what really happened. After finding herself frustrated at every turn in the Bay Area, Rebecca flees to Clear Lake, the scene of some of her happiest childhood memories. She collapses there, unable to go further, and finally confronts the emotional chaos that has been building within her. There at Clear Lake, she reaches a place of peace and resolution within herself?and it gives her the strength to both end her failed marriage and make the final push to discover the startling truth about her father.

Nan Fink Gefen is the author of Stranger in the Midst and Discovering Jewish Meditation. Her fiction and nonfiction articles have appeared in numerous publications. After fifteen years as a psychotherapist and teacher, she became the co-founder and publisher of Tikkun magazine. In 1996 she began teaching Jewish meditation, and she has trained hundreds of students in the Bay Area and nationally. In 2007 she founded Persimmon Tree: An Online Magazine of the Arts by Women over Sixty, where she remains as publisher. Nan lives in Berkeley, CA, with her husband, Jonathan Omer-Man; their blended family includes seven children and nine grandkids.