Summary

A mother leaves her baby daughter a mysterious, sealed box before she dies.

A mother leaves her baby daughter a mysterious, sealed box before she dies. Years later, when Catherine opens her mother's box - the 'Memory Box' - she finds it full of strange, unexplained objects, carefully wrapped and numbered, like clues to a puzzle. Catherine never knew her mother, but her idealized image as the 'perfect', beautiful and talented woman that the rest of her family remembers, has cast a long shadow over her life. As she tries to solve the mystery of the box of secrets, she is pulled into the past and to her mother's story, which reveals a woman far more complex, surprising and dangerous than the family legend has allowed. And in turn Catherine, fiercely independent and self-absorbed, discovers unexpected truths about herself.