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Gallery Books
January 2016
On Sale: January 12, 2016
Featuring: Lucy Wakefield; Mia
320 pages
ISBN: 1476732353
EAN: 9781476732350
Kindle: B00UDCNMZ0
Paperback / e-Book
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Simply told but deeply affecting, in the bestselling tradition of Alice McDermott and Tom Perrotta, this urgent novel unravels the heartrending yet unsentimental tale of a woman who kidnaps a baby in a superstoreβand gets away with it for twenty-one years. Lucy Wakefield is a seemingly ordinary woman who does something extraordinary in a desperate moment: she takes a baby girl from a shopping cart and raises her as her own. Itβs a secret she manages to keep for over two decadesβfrom her daughter, the babysitter who helped raise her, family, coworkers, and friends. When Lucyβs now-grown daughter Mia discovers the devastating truth of her origins, she is overwhelmed by confusion and anger and determines not to speak again to the mother who raised her. She reaches out to her birth mother for a tearful reunion, and Lucy is forced to flee to China to avoid prosecution. What follows is a ripple effect that alters the lives of many and challenges our understanding of the very meaning of motherhood. Author Helen Klein Ross, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, weaves a powerful story of upheaval and resilience told from the alternating perspectives of Lucy, Mia, Miaβs birth mother, and others intimately involved in the kidnapping. What Was Mine is a compelling tale of motherhood and loss, of grief and hope, and the life-shattering effects of a single, irrevocable moment.
AwardsFresh Fiction Box Not To Miss, Selection, December 2016
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