Winner 2020 Best New Author Award - AudioBookReviewer.com

The child lay on his back, in her shadow, in that eternity after the faint, listening to his senses lapping out, until he was empty, until he was blind, until he saw none of a thousand bruises from her ankles to the dark hair breaking on a shoulder, until he forgot all but a long white dress on the back of a folding chair. He'd happened on a failed life at the peak of its undoing, where something leaves the eye and nothing beautiful remains, and yet, within these terrors, he felt the answers to all questions close at hand, and he might have shed his flesh to know them - to join with those who knew - if not for the mortal agent who stepped into the light.

Before the last angel fled, she told him without voice not to let his fear devour him. She planted in his nature a gift that would shield him against those who would seek to break him, and though he would never forget her embrace, the face of his angel was marred by the sun and forever unknown to him...

On a warm August morning in 1975, Rita Watt unfolds a chair, takes off her dress, and hangs herself in a dusty garage in Montana.

This is where her story ends.

Five children cross her path that day.

Cherry Laurel is their story.

"A brilliant piece of literature... Burrows has an exceptional storytelling ability." (OnlineBookClub.org)

"Powerful and unsettling... Burrows knows the value of keeping the listener on the edge." (AudioBookReviewer.com)