"After an accident leaves his wife Elle brain dead, Matt Beaulieu, resolving to take her off life support, changes his mind when the doctors discover that she is pregnant - a decision that results in a controversial legal battle with Elle's family." -- from publisher.

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot....

Hospice nurse Stella prefers the night shift. Afghanistan left her veteran husband a changed man, haunted at night by memories he can't bring himself to share. Writing final letters for her hospice patients to their loved ones gives Stella the chance to help others communicate as she otherwise cannot. She only has one rule: she mails the letter only once her patient is no longer alive. When she meets a patient with a chance at redemption, she finds...