The Winding Way Home is a moving meditation on a hard-won hope that persists in the face of traumatic crisis. When disaster strikes Jesse and Alexandra's family, their lives shatter. Jesse's grief triggers a full-blown psychiatric crisis, which spurs a most unusual spiritual quest in an attempt to find a way to feel at home in what suddenly seems like a cruel world. In the midst of her own trauma, Alexandra is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, further pitching the family into desperation. Jesse's weekly breakfast with two of his children, along with Alexandra's determined efforts to fight the erasure of her memories, holds the family together despite the agonizing uncertainty surrounding all of them. Jesse and Alexandra find themselves drawn into the horrifying world of missing and abducted children and the minds of their captors, and eventually adopt an abduction survivor named Maddy and her young children. Together, they forge a new and expanded family, and create a home where everyone can heal. This is a family saga, a love story, an account of child abduction and its exacting aftermath, a tale of hard-won hope, and a profound exploration of the spiritual potential of ordinary life in the face of the unthinkable.