When she was seventeen, Janey gave her son, James, up for adoption. Nothing could have prepared her for the pain and anger that overwhelmed her as she walked away from her baby boy. Even the love of her family couldn’t abate her grief.

Rather than compelling the young mother to forget her child, therapist Tish encourages Janey to practice the important lesson of loving and letting go. Learning of Janey’s love of writing, Tish suggests that the teen write letters to her son as a way of working through her heartache.

While Dear James begins in 1972 with seventeen-year-old Janey, it soon skips ahead twenty-seven years to reveal her as a lonely woman with a box full of letters and a life empty of dreams. Her once-hopeful recovery seems to have stalled out years ago.

But her story isn’t finished yet.

Weaving the young mother’s letters to her son throughout the modern-day narrative, the author artfully juxtaposes young Janey with adult Janey—revealing the true depths of her heart. A poignant, transformative read about the gift of strong family relationships and the long road to forgiveness and healing, Janey’s story is a richly layered work of contemporary women’s fiction.