When their mother Margaret dies suddenly, three estranged sisters return to the family farmhouse in rural Tennessee with fourteen days to clean it out and close the estate. What they expect is dusty boxes and old memories. What they find is a locked door—and behind it, fifteen journals that rewrite everything they thought they knew about the woman who raised them.

Before she was “Mama,” Margaret Halloran was a nineteen-year-old runaway in Maine who fell in love with a novelist named Thomas, built a life in New York City, and survived a grief so profound it nearly broke her. The journals she left behind reveal a woman the sisters never met: passionate, ambitious, heartbroken, and fiercely protective of the secrets she carried for forty-four years.

As Avery, Jo, and Delia read together in the farmhouse where they grew up, they uncover a half-sister they never knew, a father who wasn’t their father, and the quiet courage it took their mother to choose the life they lived. Over fourteen raw, laughter-filled, tear-soaked days, the three women finally see their mother—not as the woman they thought they knew, but as the woman she was before them.

A luminous novel about the stories we inherit, the truths we hide from our children, and the unbreakable bond between sisters, What We Burned explores what it means to truly know the woman who raised you—and what it costs when she finally lets you in.

Perfect for book clubs and anyone who has ever wondered who their mother was before she became “Mom.”

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We first started out as ?The Paperback Exchange,? a chain of physical bookstores where we would part exchange your beloved books for new stories to transport you to faraway places. However, as shopping started to evolve to online shops and marketplaces, we bid our stores goodbye to become ?PBShop.? This transition has only allowed us to blossom as we now ship thousands of titles to book lovers across the globe. We pride ourselves in being a community of local book lovers which allows our passion and devotion to shine in everything we do. In 2020 we not only celebrated our 20th birthday but our 1st birthday as being completely employee owned after becoming an E.O.T in September 2019. We are proud to be different and embrace standing apart on a book mountain by working from a virtual inventory which allows us to provide thousands of books that may be difficult to get for your bookshelf or your studies. Working with a number of different suppliers allows us to explore other avenues such as puzzles, sheet music and even stationery so we really do have something for everyone. Life is about being versatile in all realms of existence. If this is your first visit or you are a returning customer, we would like to welcome you to the PBShop family, for there is no friend as loyal as a book. We are a company who put our customers at the centre of everything we do as we understand the importance of reading because once you learn to read, you will forever be free. There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours that we are yet to explore, which is why we will forever inspire curious minds.

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