Three sisters have had difficult lives, one as a result of following her dreams and two at the hands of their dysfunctional family.

Alicia Day has wanted to be an actress since watching the Oscars as a child and learning that people can get paid and receive recognition for pretending. After moving to Hollywood and having little to show for it other than a couple of friends and a forgettable straight-to-DVD series of movies, she wonders whether the gods of Hollywood will ever shine upon her.

Hope Teasdale, a bank manager and widowed single mother, still remembers the day her father gunned down her mother right before her eyes. She wants nothing to do with her incarcerated father or her hard-hearted paternal grandmother, who believes the tragedy was Hope's mother's fault and that Hope should forgive and forget.

Heaven Jetter is the youngest of the three sisters. As does big sister Hope, Heaven suffers from the memory of their parents' abusive relationship and their mother's demise. But unlike Hope, Heaven's heart is big and trusting, even if, much like her mother did, she chooses the wrong people to trust.

When Heaven learns she and Hope have a secret half-sister, she's determined to find Alicia and develop a relationship with her. Wary at first, Alicia finds herself opening up to, and adopting a nurturing posture toward, her younger and misguided sister. Hope, however, wants nothing to do with Heaven, whose behavior and choices have hurt Hope in the past, nor with Alicia or anything else to do with their father. She trusts no one. All of the sisters are searching for a way to get to a peaceful place in life, albeit by way of different paths.

Cheryl Robinson's WHEN I GET WHERE I'M GOING is another heart-wrenching story from a talented author about enduring and healing family relationships. Set in Detroit, this story delves into how family dysfunction affects individuals in different ways and how much personal choice is a factor in overcoming that dysfunction. Heaven realizes her life is messed up and why so she tries to make good decisions, even if the tentacles of the past seem to hold her down. Hope is in denial, assuming simply that her life is what she makes it and that the past has nothing to do with her. Alicia, unaware of her father and his misdeeds, demonstrates how family is what you make it, but she also illustrates how some things may be passed through the bloodline whether one is aware of certain familial patterns or not.

For me, this was Heaven's story. She's the baby of her family, as am I. She has a desire to know, and have strong relationships with, her family, as do I. She's willing to admit her mistakes and do what she can to make up for them. I try to do the same. Her decisions would not be mine, but I understood that they rose out of loyalty and her yearning for family. I found myself eager to discover how her story would end. The beauty of WHEN I GET WHERE I'M GOING is that the focal character could easily be any of the three sisters. Some may connect more with Hope, whose stubbornness I couldn't fathom, or Alicia, whose persistence in the face of mounting obstacles was admirable, to say the least. Regardless of which character readers choose, they will enjoy an engaging, stirring tale.