One phone call upends Sara Austin's world.

Out of town for a company conference, Sara gets a call that her mother is in the hospital. As her reluctant Health Care Proxy, Sara relates, with humor and alcohol, how she and her siblings, each with plenty of baggage, maneuver the murky waters of dealing with an aging parent.

In Nine Days by Judy Lannon, we learn to love and relate to Sara, a product of divorce, narcissism and alcoholism, as she works through a lifetime of self-doubt and unworthiness to emerge as a stronger, integrated woman.