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What We Leave Behind: A Novel Audiobook
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Publisher Description
From the author of Summer Hours at the Robbers Library, a tenderhearted story of two very different women grappling with the messy emotional legacies passed down by their parents—for fans of Dani Shapiro, Ann Napolitano, and Jody Picoult.
It’s the perennial question: are we a product of how we were raised, or is our identity hardwired by our genetic inheritance? When her adoptive mother dies in a freak accident, high school senior Melody Marcus doubles down on her refusal to learn anything about her birth parents. In this age of 23&me, though, that may not be possible, and the secrets hidden in her DNA threaten to upend everything she knows about herself and her family.
For Candace Milton, a successful woman in her forties, the collateral damage from her parents’ tortured marriage has led to a life of intentional unattachment. She is happy—enough. But a chance encounter with a friend of Melody’s father will challenge this assumption and force her to reimagine who she is and who she might become.
Big-hearted evocative, and achingly relatable, What We Leave Behind grapples with destiny, belonging, and love, and makes us question our own idea of family: the kind we’re born into and the kind we create.
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“Whether they’re related by blood, law, or the more contingent bond of friendship, Halpern’s beguiling, prickly characters achieve small but indisputable measures of grace as they reckon with their families of origin…with superb plotting and raucous wit added to the mix.”
— Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home
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About Sue Halpern
Sue Halpern is the author of seven books of fiction and nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Review of Books, Rolling Stone, and Condé Nast Traveler. A former New Yorker staff writer, she lives Vermont with her husband, the writer and environmental activist Bill McKibben, and is a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College.
About the Narrators
Allyson Ryan is an Earphones Award–winning voice actress who can be heard in commercials, promos, animation, and audiobooks. She has extensive experience on stage and television. In New York, she acted in and directed more than thirty plays. Her television credits include roles on Eleventh Hour, Law & Order, and One Life to Live. She has also appeared as “Mom” in several television commercials. Advertising Age nominated her for a Bobby Award in the best actress category for her work as the Duracell mom.
Samantha Cook is a bookaholic obsessed with novels about strong, sexy, smart women. Audiobook narrating was as natural a choice as breathing. When not recording in her LA studio, she can be found wandering the museums of Paris, imagining herself as a Degas dancer, Chateaubriand’s Atala, Canova’s Psyche, David’s Josephine, or Venus (preferably with arms intact).