Winner of a 2015 Benjamin Franklin Silver Award for Popular Fiction. This is a very dark novel with adversity and strength. Abuse and family discord are major players in this story. The title Family Inheritance does not mean money or land. It is more about the cycle of abuse that travels through a family and everyone it touches. Not all childhoods are filled with bedtime stories and good memories. Some are filled with abusive parents, neglect, and horrible, painful secrets. Those beginnings are just to be survived and hopefully forgotten.This was the case for Helene, Alice, and Suzanne. They all thought they had done just that - left the pain of their childhood behind. While they may have escaped the farm, but Helene, Alice, and Suzanne find they are still perpetuating a cycle of pain, abuse, alcoholism, anger, fear, and bitterness. When their mother slips into a coma, the three estranged sisters are know they need to return home, if only to escape the pain in which they are all drowning. Once together and seeing themselves through each other's eyes, the sisters are forced to confront their demons. Will they be able to tread through the wreckage of the past to create lives filled with hope, love, and triumph?