The Yellow Toothbrush

"The day after I visit my daughter in prison..."

How do you forgive the unforgivable? How do you find compassion for a person who does the unthinkable? What do you do the day after you visit your daughter in prison?

For a mother, forgiving and loving aren't options, they're built in. How do you love and forgive your child even after the worst happens? Knowing that you must do something, you figure out how.

Eight years ago writer, mom, and oma Kathryn Gahl found herself on a train she didn't want to be on, with a ticket she didn't buy. The Yellow Toothbrush is her journey of mercy. From her daughter's father's mother, pregnant in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, to falling in love with her daughter's father in Greenwich Village in the 70s, to raising her daughter in a farmhouse with a garden in Wisconsin, to visiting her daughter in prison and what happens after that, Gahl connects the dots of trauma and shows us over and over again the light of love and not giving up.

In this poetic memoir-too big, truthful, and beautiful to put down-Gahl's heart shows us what's possible when people choose compassion, and her words show us how.