The Edge of Belonging by Amanda Cox opens with a homeless man, Harvey James, finding a newborn baby abandoned near his camp. He cleans her up and decides to look for a nice house with toys in the yard. A family with children would know what she needed. But none of the places he sees seem suitable.

He names her Ivy for the way she wound her way around his heart so quickly.

When he stumbles upon a pantry at a church with baby supplies, he begins to wonder if he could take care of her after all. At least for a while.

Twenty-four years later, Ivy is engaged and working her dream job as a counselor in a school when she learns that her grandmother has passed away. None of her family is related by blood, but their bond is strong as if they were. She goes home for the funeral, but her fiance’s selfishness in not wanting her to go makes her realize how controlling and emotionally abusive he has been.

She receives a letter her grandmother sent before her death, asking Ivy to take care of some of her things and telling her about a journal detailing her origin.

Ivy had always been told she had been left on her adopted parents’ doorstep as a baby, and they took her in. But her grandmother indicates there was more to the story.

After breaking up with her fiance and losing her job, Ivy travels back to her grandmother’s house. But the journal is missing. Her parents and uncle won’t answer any questions about her birth, saying the past is better left behind. But Ivy feels she needs to know where she came from to determine where she should go next. She begins to piece together clues found in her grandmother’s belongings.

The story switches back and forth from the events after her birth in 1994 and the present day, with the people and circumstances in Ivy’s and Harvey’s lives slowly revealed.

I loved this book. Some of the themes involve the nature of family, healing of wounded souls, the nature of sacrificial love, reaching out to help others even when they might reject it. The book also touches on homelessness, PTSD, depression, infertility, the foster care system, sex trafficking, and more. Everyone has a story, and that’s true of all of the main characters here.

Although I enjoyed Ivy’s journey, Harvey is my favorite character. At the beginning, he’s so skittish he can barely hold a conversation. He’s been shuffled aside so many times, he’s closed off to everyone. But his love for Ivy pushes him to extend himself far beyond his comfort zone.

Ivy’s Grandma Pearl is another favorite, but I can’t tell you too much about her without spoiling the story. Though both sides of the dual timeline focus on Ivy, Pearl is in many ways the hub of the wheel that connects all the characters. She says of herself, “If the story of my life could say one thing, I’d hope it would show the importance of venturing into the highways and the hedges to let invisible people know they’re seen and loved. To invite them in.”

A couple of other sentences that stood out to me:

I’m starting to see that when I let go of my grip on my pain, I make space for new things. Things that bless me in a way I never would have imagined. I’m getting there little by little—learning how to release my disappointments and embrace the gifts I have (pp. 295-296).

It’s not about my pain versus your pain. It’s about sharing in the human experience and knowing what it is to hurt. It takes courage—stepping forward and healing when it’s so tempting, so safe, to stay and worship the altars we’ve built to our pain (p. 297).

I started out listening to the audiobook, nicely read by Leah Horowitz, which was free from Audible’s Plus Catalog. But Audible rotates titles in and out of their free offerings, and this book rotated out about a day before I could finish it, so I lost the quotes I had marked in the early part of the book. Thankfully, our library had a copy, so I could finish the book.

This book was Amanda’s debut novel in 2020. I’m looking forward to reading the books she has written since then.