This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone

Set on the rugged coast of Maine during the 1970s, This Life Is in Your Hands introduces a superb young writer haunted by the need to uncover the truth of a childhood tragedy and capture the beauty of a unique way of life. Melissa Coleman tells of her parents, Eliot and Sue--a handsome, idealistic young couple from well-to-do families who forgo the trappings of society to carve a homestead from the woods. While they achieve success and recognition, the pursuit of purity and simplicity comes at a price. Winters are long, summers frenetic, and the young farm apprentices threaten the Coleman's marriage. Then, one summer day when Melissa is seven, her three-year-old sister drowns in a pond where they often played. What really happened, and who, if anyone, is to blame? In the wake of the accident, ideals give way to human frailty, divorce, and a mother's breakdown--and ultimately young Melissa is abandoned to the care of apprentices. This Life Is in Your Hands is her vivid telling of what happened; a true story, both tragic and redemptive, of the quest to make a good life, the role of fate, and the power of belief.