Arcadia Public Library

Years of trying unsuccessfully to conceive a child have broken more than Angie DeSaria's heart. Following a painful divorce, she moves back to her small Pacific Northwest hometown and takes over management of her family's restaurant. In West End, where life rises and falls like the tides, Angie's fortunes will drastically change yet again when she meets and befriends a troubled young woman.

"Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different choice for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins...

The dying wish of a loving father ignites a family drama that brings two sisters and their acid-tongued, Russian-born mother together in a story that reaches back to WWII Leningrad.

Reluctantly giving up her California practice working with troubled children, Julia Cates is forced to draw on all her skills to deal with a young mute girl found abandoned and terrified in her Pacific Northwest hometown.