Katrina Anne Willis is an author, blogger, and essayist who was named a Midwest Writers Fellow, has been an Indianapolis Listen to Your Mother participant, and is a contributor to Mamalode magazine. Her work has been anthologized in Nothing but the Truth So Help Me God: 73 Women On Life’s Transitions (Nothing but the Truth Publishing, 2014) and My Other Ex: Women’s True Stories of Leaving and Losing Friends (HerStories Project Press, 2014). She was awarded the 2014 Parenting Media Association’s Gold Medal Blogger Award for her work with Indy’s Child magazine and was a BlogHer 2015: Experts Among Us Voice of the Year Honoree. Katrina lives in Northwest Ohio with her husband, Chris, and her teenagers, Sam, Gus, Mary Claire, and George. Learn more at www.katrinaannewillis.com.

Broken by their unorthodox Midwestern childhood, sisters Catherine, Anne, and Jessica Mathers search for love, acceptance, and worth – often in the most unlikely places. Catherine, the oldest of the Mathers sisters, is an English professor battling breast cancer with Cytoxan, red wine, and profanity. Anne is a wife and stay-at-home mother of two, struggling to make ends meet in a suburban existence that both suffocates and confounds her. Jessica, the youngest by ten years and estranged – by choice – from her family, is an exotic dancer who feels safer on stage than in a relationship. But when the sisters are faced with an incomprehensible loss, they are forced to reevaluate themselves, their damaged bonds, and their fragile future. Overwhelmed by their shared and sacred grief, Catherine, Anne, and Jessica must now face the questions that have been their silent, lifelong companions: How long must the sins of the parents define the lives of the children? When do the choices we make become ours and ours alone? What does it take to begin anew?Parting Gifts illuminates one highly dysfunctional family’s tentative, desperate crawl toward a life of meaning and worth.