Truthing Margaret (ePub)

When 16-year-old PEGGY's destitute nuclear family implodes, running is the only way she can cope. Love for her older brother DANIEL, who disappeared after the fateful night, morphs into yearning emptiness at the core of her being. Later, she learns from her paternal aunt that what little she might have possessed was destroyed by arson. The need to rise from her ashes becomes her flight for survival.

In order to escape the rancor of her childhood memories, MARGARET WIGGE chases one opportunity after another. She and her collegiate sidekick, ALLISON, pioneer an empire. Mentored by the affluent ENDRIGHTs, Margaret smashes headlong through the glass ceiling of industry, landing alone at a penthouse office in Chicago's Loop. She finds one way up, and no way down.

Margaret's successfully organized world crashes into chaos when a mysterious hand-delivered package arrives on her desk one summer morning. Forced to confront the past, her priorities change in ways she never imagined. Reunited with cousin JEFFERSON, the two follow an unlikely trail, over a decade old, to Daniel's last deciphered whereabouts. One cold, marginal clue leads them to a remote resort town.

Indiscretion puts Margaret under the official scrutiny of veteran forest service ranger, CARL DERSON. Despite his initial wariness, Carl aids Margaret's unorthodox search for her missing brother. Nothing, it seems, will fill the hole in her heart. When she meets a man she thinks could be her grownup brother, everything is wrong, including his name and his history. Undaunted, all of her resourcefulness is set to the task. Margaret's deep-rooted longing transforms both the immutable past and the mercurial future.