Taking chances is part of life, but when you bet your future against the odds, it's a high-risk game. Kate Madison's stylish resale shop has been a big SoHo success, supporting her and her four kids since her husband's untimely death. Now they are grown and ready to forge lives of their own. And they all choose to play against the odds, to their mother's dismay. Isabelle, a dedicated attorney, is in line to make partner at her Wall Street firm when...

"A senior partner at a prestigious New York law firm, Kate Morgan couldn't be prouder of her three grown children. Tamara, Anthony, and Claire all went to great schools, chose wonderful career paths, and would have made their father proud. A single mother for years after the death of her husband, Kate keeps a tight rein on her family, her career, and even her own emotions, never once asking herself if she truly knows her children . . . or if her hopes...

Entering the afterlife due to a hit and run accident, a successful author learns she can observe the earthly lives of her nearly grown children and is also permitted three "nudges" to alter the outcome of events.

In the spring of 1985, Hannah's father disappeared, and was presumed drowned. Now she has returned to Charleston, and encounters rivals and ghosts from her past, as she sets out to discover what really happened to her father so long ago.

Ardeevin, County Clare, Ireland. 1980. When her oldest brother Dan announces he will enter the priesthood, young Hanna watches her mother howl in agony and retreat to her room. In the years that follow, the Madigan children leave one by one: Dan, not a priest, for the frenzy of New York under the shadow of AIDS; Constance for a hospital in Limerick, where petty antics follow simple tragedy; Emmet for the backlands of Mali, where he learns the fragility...

The years of life have moved on and it is now the early 1960s. The Anderson children have grown and left the house, building lives and families of their own. Matthew and Ellen realize they aren't as young as they used to be, and may have to think about moving to town. Hard times and challenges confront all the Anderson family, in one way or another, and they must find the strength to trust in God and lean on each other to remain a tight-knit family....