From the bestselling author of Honeysuckle Season comes a sweeping saga that interweaves the past and present in an epic tapestry of love, war, and loss.

As a hospice nurse, Zara Mitchell has already seen more death than most people will experience in a lifetime. So when her older sister asks her to help care for their ailing grandmother, Zara agrees--despite strained family relationships.

Though pale and tired, Nonna has lost none of her sharp mind. She's fixated on finding something long forgotten, and she immediately puts Zara to work cleaning out the attic. Unexpectedly, amid the tedium of sifting through knickknacks and heirlooms, Zara also reconnects with a man she's attracted to but whose complicated past makes romance seem impossible.

But then Zara finds what Nonna was looking for: a wooden chest, an emerald broach, a leather-bound journal. As she immerses herself in stories of heroism and loss set against the backdrop of war-torn Italy in 1943, Zara finds answers to questions she didn't know she had. And they change everything she thinks she knows about love, regret, and seizing the day.

A southerner by birth, Mary Ellen Taylor has a love for her home state of Virginia that is evident in her contemporary women's fiction. When she's not writing, she spends time baking; hiking; and spoiling her miniature dachshunds, Buddy, Bella, and Tiki.