After over ten years of paying storage fees for their late mother's possessions, Lisa Tracy and her sister finally sat down to the task of preparing for an auction. The process of uncovering the history of objects as varied as mismatched cake plates, an old Chinese trunk, and a chair in which our first president might have rested, is the tale she tells in The Objects of Our Affection: Uncovering My Family's Past, One Chair, Pistol and Pickle Fork at a Time (Bantam). "Lisa Tracy's Objects of Our Affection is a lovely and loving book, revealing the life of her well-traveled military family not just through the furniture they chose to keep, but through what they lost and surrendered along the way. Moving from the heights of San Juan Hill to the courtyards of China's Forbidden City, this book shows us why the possessions of our ancestors exert a profound influence upon our modern lives." – Jeff Gammage. Lisa Tracy's previous books include Muddy Waters: The Legacy of Katrina and Rita and The Gradual Vegetarian.