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What We Burned
Paperback
General FictionLiterary Fiction
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: May 26 2026
Pages: 98
Weight: 0.31
Height: 0.20 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
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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