Every year on March 26th, Verity Peterson visits Ogunquit Beach, where she puts a handwritten message into a bottle and launches it into the waves. It's a ritual of remembrance for the daughter she hasn't seen in sixteen years -- not since her baby's father, Alan, took two-month-old Gemma and disappeared. Verity keeps searching and hoping, sustained by the thought that someday she might get to be a mother to her own child. And finally, one phone call...

"Nell King's cozy home in Yorktide, Maine, seems a step down from the impeccably decorated Boston house she shared with her ex-husband, but Nell and her two daughters have found real happiness and comfort here. Now, faced with what may be their last Christmas together before Molly and Felicity move away, she feels anxious: what role is left for her to fill?" --

Gincy Gannon Luongo escaped from the storybook small town of Appleville, New Hampshire twenty years ago. Now, she is bringing her teenage daughter Tasmin with her to visit her recently widowed mother in the weeks leading up to Christmas at her brother Tommy's urging. Her once feisty and strong-willed mother Ellen Gannon is mired in depression and her brother isn't doing much better. With each passing day, dealing with the imagined slights and lingering...