Seventeen-year-old Willie Ramsey has never known his parents. His mother died when Willie was two and his father disappeared before Willie was born. The grandmother who raised him refused to answer any questions about Willie's dad and now that she is dead, Willie feels even more lonely and cut-off from his family's past. Cleaning out the contents of his mother's old desk which has been left untouched since her death, Willie comes across a stack of letters written by his father to his mother. Through the letters, Willie and the reader gain a sense of who his father was and an understanding of why he left. Shannon skillfully combines two distinct forms of narrative to create a unified whole in a first novel about the challenges of familial love. (Age 14 and older)