FarmMom

I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me. Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries.

College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran-and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.

Two years have passed since the terrible car accident that took the life of John Baxter's daughter, Erin; her husband; and three of their four daughters. Prompted by grief, and missing his daughter, John has invited a stranger for Christmas Eve dinner - Kendra Bryant, the transplant recipient who now has Erin's heart. In light of their father's idea, Ashley and her brother, Luke, don't think it's right. They want to protect their 10-year-old niece, Amy - the only surviving member of the accident. But John is determined.