Calescence

Since childhood, Hilarie Burton Morgan has felt the call to record, keep and catalogue life in all its strange wonder. It was a whimsical habit, with no clear goal. And then, when she became a mother, the importance of all that collecting snapped into focus.

All Jennifer Lewis wants is a normal life. A mother and father who loves her, family dinners, birthday parties, vacations, and playing with other kids in the neighborhood. Instead, her parents divorce and her mother marries an abusive man. Jennifer witnesses horrific fights. Her stepfather abuses her siblings and her. And the fallout ends in death and drug addiction for some of them. When she enters adulthood, she's insecure, full of fear, and destined to repeat all the trauma from which she's emerged.