Undressing the Moon

At thirty, Piper Kincaid feels too young to be dying. Cancer has eaten away her strength. Yet with all the questions of her future before her, she's adrift in the past, remembering the fateful summer she turned fourteen and her life changed forever. What Piper dreaded came to pass: her restless, artistic mother, finally left. She had a brother who loved her, but her mother's absence, her father's distance, and a volatile secret threatened to destroy everything... Now Piper is once again left with the jagged pieces of a shattered life. If she is ever going to survive, she'll have to begin with the summer that broke them all... "As a child, Piper Kincaid always felt her mother was on the edge of leaving. And then the summer Piper turns fourteen, it really happens. Devastated by this loss, and the rejection she feels from her increasingly distant father, she finds an uneasy comfort with an older man who is equally riddled with sorrow. Discovering desire for the first time, Piper is at first fascinated and strengthened by the attention. But with time, the growing weight of their secret and his need begins a devastating avalanche of events neither is able to control or understand." "Now Piper is thirty years old and dying of breast cancer. Reflecting on her life, she is drawn ineluctably back to that summer and haunted with regret. As she attempts to reassemble the fragments of her history, what emerges is the kaleidoscopic portrait of a young woman whose indefatigable spirit prevails, despite shattered dreams."--BOOK JACKET. A woman with breast cancer attempts to reassemble the fragments of her history - a richly-woven, coming-of-age tale focusing on the re-evaluation of the present that comes with confronting the past.