Lillianna Ferguson has spent the last twenty years pretending her father is dead. She moved to Oregon—far away from her childhood home in Delaware—changed her name from Emma to Lillianna and vowed never to go back.When her brother, Greg, phones, begging her to come home to care for their father who has been diagnosed with a dangerous, aortic aneurysm, she is adamant in her refusal. When did he … When did he ever take care of her?
But Greg is equally stubborn in his arguments that she return, as the surgeon at Johns Hopkins won’t repair the aneurysm without first amputating their father’s infected leg.
Calvin Miller, a disabled WWII veteran, survived a grenade that killed his best friend. It took off most of his right hand and left him with osteomyelitis in his leg, a bone-destroying infection, that refuses to heal. His surgeon believes his only chance for survival is amputation. The irony that his body is about to experience another explosion does not escape Lilianna.
Calvin, who has fought more than fifty years to save this leg, is adamant he will die the same way he lived—with both legs. Greg believes, if anyone can convince their father to have the amputation, it will be Lillianna.
Will she leave her safe life and reenter the minefield of her childhood?
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The title synthesizes the story: two characters with pieces of themselves missing because of their father-daughter relationship, It, in turn, is fueled by his relationship with his mother who died when he was only six. Most of us missed something in our childhood and Cal and Emma (Lillianna) take a long, hard journey toward forgiveness. Before they reach that point, they endure a lot of heartache and loneliness trying to live without their missing pieces.
This book will keep you turning the pages until you finally read the last one. I did’t want it to end but as with all good ones it had too. Throughout this story I had a love-hate feeling for Calvin. I hated the things he did to his wife and two children. I hated that he was so mean and abusive. I had no intention of letting him off the hook for it. There is no excuse for hitting.
Lillianna/Emma grew up in an abusive home with her older brother, Greg. Their dad was an alcoholic and prone to hitting when he was drunk. Lillianna left home many years before vowing to never return. But she did when her dad was in the hospital. She was suppose to talk him into having an amputation that would increase his odds of living through another major surgery.
Calvin was a child, young man and later a drunk. He was a disabled veteran from WW2 who lost most of his fingers and a lot of bone in one of his legs. He was just a young man newly married who wanted the best for his family. From a fairly young age Calvin knew what it was to want to be loved. To be touched, hugged, loved by the ones who should have treasured him. He was a kind, caring, loving child who lost his mother at a young age. For some reason other family found it hard to get close to him. To truly see him. He left his grandparents at a young age and made a life for himself when the war broke out. Of course he insisted and wanted to do the right thing. I loved that Calvin. My heart broke for that Calvin. But after he was hurt and crippled he became someone different. Someone who was mean and cruel.
While in the hospital awaiting surgery Calvin and Emma/Lillianna were reunited. Lillianna came to see her dad after being away many many years. She knew she hated him but listened as he told her his story. Reading his story was like looking into the life of someone you don’t want to like but will eventually thaw out the heart. He was such a good person until that grenade took away a huge part of him. He loved his wife with all of his heart. He loved his children the same way too. Things happened in his life to turn him bitter and angry. He took that anger out on his family while wondering why they didn’t hate him and blame him for the accident that took such a part of him away. You may or may not learn to forgive Calvin. I did.
I wept reading this book. Some happy tears and some very sad and ugly tears. It will touch your heart in many ways. It did mine. He was a very complicated man in many ways but also seemed to have the heart of such a kind caring person. Even through the bitter mean years I think he cared deeply.
This is a great book. One you need to read and maybe learn forgiveness. It’s told through Lillianna’s voice and through the things Calvin told her. It’s just a very good book and I highly recommend it.
Thank you Susan Clayton-Goldner for this ARC in exchange for my honest unbiased review. I give it a big 5 stars for all the great feels, and some very sad ones. For making me feel like I was there looking at the scenery and for the forgiveness this book made me feel. It’s an all around good book. I loved it!!
Susan Clayton-Goldner has written a riveting story about the strained relationship between a troubled woman and her seriously ill father in “Missing Pieces.” How well do we really know our parents and what has happened in their lives to make them the people we think we know? How do we come to terms with the damage done when a parent is too dysfunctional and traumatized to raise us in a healthy family structure? Clayton-Goldner aptly answers these questions as she reveals one man’s memories of family tragedy, abandonment, sudden life-altering disaster, and a love so tender and eternal it rises above it all. And through his revelations, his daughter comes to regard him with new understanding, appreciation, and admiration. Yet, through all of this she discovers her own shortcomings and questions whether she has handed the same legacy down to her children, who are now adults.
The narrative is oftentimes poetic in its intimate portrayal of time and place. The characters, even the minor ones, are very well developed and jump off the pages as real people. The story moves at a perfect pace, unfolding gracefully as secrets are revealed.
“Missing Pieces” deeply touches the heart. You as the reader will find yourself looking back upon your own childhood and wondering how well you truly know the two people who created you and how their lives have affected yours. Perhaps, you may even find healing in its pages. Get this book; you’ll be glad you did!
Lillianna Ferguson receives a phone call from her brother Greg begging her to come home and help him take care of their father. Their father Calvin Miller a disabled WWII veteran is in the hospital for an aortic aneurysm. The surgeon won’t repair his aneurysm without first amputating his leg. Greg thinks that if anyone can talk him into having his leg amputated then Lillianna can.
Calvin was injured by a grenade during the war that took most of his hand and left him with a bone-destroying infection. The surgeon believes that Calvin’s leg must be amputated if he is to survive the surgery to fix his aortic aneurysm. Calvin refuses to let them take his leg saying he lived with two legs so he would die with two legs.
Lillianna doesn’t want to go home and take care of her father as he never took care of her. Their father was a very abusive man when they were growing up. Lillianna hoping to put her childhood behind her and to forget it all left or more likely ran away as an adult which was something she couldn’t do as a child. Whatever the reason was that held her back from running away all those years ago which only she knows, maybe it was just fear. She changed her name from Emma to Lillianna after she left.
I’m guessing that Lillianna thought if she changed her name that she would no longer be that person and anything that happened to that little girl was not her and all of it happened to someone else. It was her way of dealing with it and pushing everything way down deep inside of her heart to harden it and if she could push it down far enough then all the pain would go away and it would be no more.
But after talking with her husband Steve he convinced her that she needed to go see her father and talk to him if she didn’t then she may regret it for the rest of her life. Steve was speaking from a similar experience of his own. So after her talk with Steve she decided to return home to help take care of her father.
Missing Pieces is Lillianna/Emma and her father’s stories. Lillianna sits by her father’s bedside and talks to him and ask him questions about his life when he was growing up and about his life with her mother. She asks him questions she never thought to ask him before or maybe couldn’t. She gets to know the man underneath the face that he puts on for the world the real Calvin Miller.
Missing Pieces is a heart-felt story that will have you grabbing for the tissue early on as the tears will be streaming down your face. Missing Pieces is a story that may have a lot of people thinking about their lives and the pieces that are missing in their own lives giving them hope in how to put their own pieces back together again. This is one review that is very difficult to write with all the different feelings coming from it. Missing Pieces is one of those stories that will tear you apart inside in more ways than one. It is a story that you will remember for many, many years.
Do I recommend Missing Pieces? Of course I do but I would like to give warning that it deals with some very tough subjects one of them being child abuse.
Wow!!!! A must read for everyone!!!! Beware, it will make you rethink your life!!!
Do not judge a book by its cover. There is a morale in every story. There are at least two sides to every story. Fiction lies to a greater truth (Susan Clayton-Goldner). Things are not always as they seem.
This is a hard review to write for me. What to say and not give the story a way. You have a difficult relationship with a family member, needs surgery to save life but has other medical issue that is interfering. Ask to come see this family member to help by other family member. The family member is a veteran who is determined (as all veterans are) to not lose leg after all this time. The important part is what happens while at the hospital and learning about each other,also coming to realizations that some things are not what they seem.Learn about yourself. See the world from someone else’s eyes and experiences.
I admit I put off reading this book to last minute. Why? The email that introduce this book had at the beginning something about a WWll veteran. Being a veteran myself, I knew, so did not read the email because I did not want to be influenced. I just read the whole email and found out that this story is based on a similar real life event in the author’s life. I am Glad you got to have this journey, Susan. If only we all could have an eye opening experience like this. Makes you look at the world differently.
Beware, that you are in a very very happy place when you read this book. Guarantee to trigger you somewhere along the line. Military, veteran, alcohol, abuse, family.
I will say that in my opinion three years in a hospital doing recovery from military injury and being given morphine for pain is not unusual and I believe leads to the drinking issues. When I was active duty, the DOD was reducing the use of morphine because of the addictive issues. Now the trend is going back to opioids for chronic pain. Not for me!!!!
This is my honest and freely given review. I did receive an ARC book.
Missing Pieces by Susan Clayton-Goldner
Heartfelt and heart-wrenching this story tells of woman that ran from her abusive childhood to take up a new name and life across the continent. Why she has done so becomes clear slowly as the story unfolds. She is NOT willing to head back to her father’s side to help him deal with major medical issues but in the end decides to return – not for her father but to help her brother who has been there for their father while she has been away. What she finds when she arrives is not the father of her memories, though those memories still manage to haunt her. As she spends time with her father she learns more of his past, how he was raised, how he made his living, how he met her mother and how he came by the injury that so changed his life and the lives of those around him. As she listens she also realizes some home truths about herself AND sees some of her past memories in a bit different light, too. This not an easy read but in my opinion the story was told well and with compassion for all of the characters in the story. What I thought going into the story changed as I read and learned more about both Lilliana and her father and what happened to make them the people they were.
Thank you to the author for the ARC – This is my honest review.
5 Stars
Lillian has struggled with her relationship with her father for years. When Greg calls and asks her to come and help him with her father she doesn’t want to go. After talking to Steve she realizes that she has to try to help her brother. When Lillian goes to the hospital to see her father she is angry with him. Watching these two try to have a relationship will have you on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next. I had the honor to review this book for the author for a honest review. I would give this book a higher rating than a five star review if I could.