The Waiting Room

~Heartwarming, honest, and captivating~
The Waiting Room is an impressive debut novel from Piper Punches that unabashedly explores the deep, fragile mother and daughter bond while examining the missed opportunities that come from holding back our true selves from each other.

Like most daughters, Charlotte thought she knew everything there was to know about her mother: small town doctor, respected member of the community, a single mother forced to raise her daughter alone after her husband’s tragic and untimely death. But that wasn’t her mother’s entire story. Dr. Sylvie Day was a woman with secrets and lies that threatened to destroy everything Charlotte believed to be true.

On the day of Sylvie's funeral, Charlotte comes face to face with Harold Klein, the one person in the small farming community of Marion, Missouri her mother detested and the only person who truly knew the heart of Sylvie Day. It is this fateful meeting that puts into action a series of events that brings forth a lifetime of lies and betrayal that were always lurking in the shadows of Charlotte’s childhood. Faced with the truth of who her mother really was, Charlotte is forced to confront not only her mother's past but her own failures as a daughter, and learn to forgive herself while accepting her mother for the woman she really was.

The Waiting Room weaves a tale of small town, country living that reveals the complexities of mother and daughter love, the invisible bonds that connect people, and the pain reverberates through generations because of the choices we make. As Charlotte delves farther into the past, the true story of Dr. Sylvie Day becomes clearer and clearer with each turn of the page, reminding us that the secrets we keep aren't always ours to take to the grave.