What We Remember

Every family has a hidden story-even the perfect ones. Dig just a little, beyond the smiling holiday photographs and the oft-repeated anecdotes, and other memories come flooding back-the kind that can compel a family to stick together through catastrophe, or drive a chasm between them forever.

On the morning James McCloud, a Seattle district attorney, gets a call from his sister, Celeste, he senses his own long-buried family history is about to be dragged into the light. James's father, Dani...