Outlines of Practical Philosophy: Dictated Portions of the Lectures of Hermann Lotze (1885)

Before dawn one wintry February morning, Joanna McAllister receives a phone call from an elderly woman who was once her nextdoor neighbor. The news is very bad. Joanna’s sister and brother-in-law, Margaret and Jim Phelps, have been killed in a traffic accident. While Joanna never felt any true love for her younger sibling, she agrees to travel home to Philadelphia and see to the final arrangements. It is on this journey home that Joanna discovers Margaret has left her older sister two unexpected and priceless gifts: the guardianship of twelve-year-old Natalie, and forgiveness. Joanna finds out that it is never too late to give ourselves a second chance. She begins to understand that we are what we remain to be, what we leave behind, and that every day brings with it a chance for renewal and a resurrection of the human spirit.