Mara Nichols, a terminally ill career woman, wife, and mother, and Scott Coffman, a middle-school teacher whose eight-year-old foster son is about to return to his former inmate mother, traverse the last five days they have to say goodbye to their loved ones.

Based in Ørstavik's own experience of losing her Italian husband to cancer. By facing loss directly, she includes readers in an experience that many face in isolation. Written and set in the early months of 2020, its themes of loss and suffering are particularly well suited for a time of international mourning.

"Frankie Sicari is roused from sleep late one night by a key rattling in the front door lock. It's her ex-husband, Charley Blackwell: a man she hasn't seen for nearly a quarter of a century. What's baffling is that Charley seems to think they are still married, and has no recollection of his current wife, Hannah. When medical tests reveal shocking findings, Frankie finds herself reluctantly caring for the man who left her twenty years earlier, while...