Anastasia Hobbet

From the book: 

Next to my brother, I felt ancient, stuffed full of a cork-dry knowledge that could do me no good. I knew everything about him except how to make him stay home.

Can an image of beauty save your life? 

Raised by a cold and secretive family in the wake of her mother’s violent death, Virginia has always depended on beauty for comfort, although she never knew how much until now, when everything’s happening at once—everything bad. She can’t seem to recognize beauty anymore, let alone conjure it for herself, her usual cure, even when her grandmother gives her the one family heirloom she’s cherished all her life, a shattered but glowing piece of ancient blue stained glass. She’s brought some of her problems down on herself: though she’s smart and self-reliant, she’s also unsettled and acerbic, which is why Ben just left her, the one man she should have kept. Her beloved younger half-brother may be escaping her too, by taking off again on assignment as a war photographer to the Middle East. And now both her father and grandmother are terminally ill. All the family history they’ve never talked about will die with them, including their memories of Ginnie’s mother and her early, tragic death. Ginnie has almost nothing to remember her by: a handful of stolen snapshots that capture mere seconds of her mother’s life.

"Her footprint in the damp sand is the only thing in perfect focus. I can count every toe."