2016 USA Best Book Awards: General Fiction, Finalist
2016 USA Best Book Awards: Literary Fiction, Finalist
“Katrina Willis can take a painful experience and offer enlightenment. She can take a hardship and reveal opportunity. She can describe deep despair and make you feel hopeful. How? Through her extraordinary gift of detail and language . . . through her brave willingness to go where others dare not go . . . through her heart that feels deeply and fully. Unlike any author I've ever read, Willis transports me into a moment so I can see, hear, taste, and feel it as if I am there. And when I am lost in one of her stories, I don't want to come back. Because through her stories, I am healed. I am understood. I am fully alive.” —Rachel Macy Stafford, New York Times best-selling author of Hands Free Mama
"In Parting Gifts, Willis paints the portrait of three sisters with careful and exacting strokes. All three women are seeking to overcome their own personal and shared tragedies, and you will become attached to each one of them as they make their way back home to each other." —T. Greenwood, author of Two Rivers, Bodies of Water, and The Forever Bridge
"Parting Gifts is a rare treasure, the sort of book that leaves the reader attached to the characters long after finishing the final page. Katrina Anne Willis has painted a family portrait, intricate, and real, capturing what it means to be family, what it means to struggle with both our need to belong, and our need to be set free. Parting Gifts cracked my heart open, and reminded me of what it means to be human. I loved this book." —Karen Lynch, author of Good Cop, Bad Daughter: Memoirs of an Unlikely Police Officer