A house, a husband, a baby: Dawn seemingly has everything one could wish for in England in the 1980s. But then she meets Hazel and begins to sense what another life could be like. Suddenly, everything is much brighter – and more complicated. Because Dawn has obligations: she has her little daughter Maggie. Decades later, Dawn is just a shadowy memory for Maggie. Her father Heron raised her alone, and the two are inseparable. When Heron receives a diagnosis that turns his life upside down, he initially tells Maggie nothing about it. Because he has always preferred to remain silent about uncomfortable truths – just like what happened in 1982. In prose that is both delicate and powerful, and filled with warm-hearted characters, Claire Lynch's "Familiensache" poses the question of what makes a family and how the wounds of the past can heal.