"[A] novel about ordinary lives that intersect during a heart-stopping crisis. The warm fall day starts like any other at the Center, a women's reproductive health services clinic, its staff offering care to anyone who passes through its doors. Then, in late morning, a desperate and distraught gunman bursts in and opens fire, taking all inside hostage. After rushing to the scene, Hugh McElroy, a police hostage negotiator, sets up a perimeter and begins making a plan to communicate with the gunman. As his phone vibrates with incoming text messages, he glances at it, and, to his horror, finds out that his fifteen-year-old daughter, Wren, is inside the clinic. But Wren is not alone. She will share the next and the next few hours of her young life with a cast of unforgettable characters ... [T]his is a story that traces its way back to what brought each of these very different individuals to the same place on this fateful day"--