When the hen lays her eggs, the shells are soft and pliable, forming their durable armour as they experience the outside world. Each of us enters the world, with similar flawed and weak shells. Our shells are not broken and cracked by life, but are formed of the fragments that we encounter, piece by piece, growing more complete with each experience. What We Have Lost is a series of disconnected anecdotes in the lives of a family shaped by extreme poverty. These individual narratives chronicle the slow sculpting of the characters, as they fuse with their world, enveloped in mental illness. Molded by their mother's paranoia, social isolation and obsessive drive to instill the hunger for learning and sense of duty to others, the four siblings evolve in unique and often pathological ways. Not knowing or understanding the bonds of familial love, Garry, Judy, Rob and Roger need to discover their own path to personal peace. None may make it. What We Have Lost exposes the cruelty of poverty. It opens up the heart of that world, in surprising and convoluted ways. The pathos is clear, the hidden pleasures need unearthing. What We Have Lost is a collection of anecdotes, but, as you read, you will find that they are far from disconnected, after all.