b1 International Bestsellerb pbIn this surging epic, a veritable decathlon of the spirit, Kennedy incisively dramatizes the enigma of chance, petty cruelty, and catastrophic evil, 'unalloyed grief, ' and the tensile strength concealed beneath our obvious vulnerability. --iBooklisti starred reviewb pOn the night of her thirteenth birthday, Jane Howard made a vow to her warring parents she would never get married, and she would never have children. pBut life, as Jane comes to discover, is a profoundly random business. Many years and many lives later, she is a professor in Boston, in love with a brilliant, erratic man named Theo. And then Jane becomes pregnant. Motherhood turns out to be a great welcome surprise--but when a devastating turn of events tears her existence apart she has no choice but to flee all she knows and leave the world. pJust when she has renounced life itself, the disappearance of a young girl pulls her back from the edge and into an obsessive search for some sort of