Following the breakup of her marriage, it's just veterinarian's assistant Trish and her teen son, Will. All of the family she's known is gone. She lost her mother and baby sister years ago in a car accident, never knew her father, and the grandparents who raised her are dead. Trish desires a family and moves to back to her hometown of Denver to start over after her divorce.

Trish's search for family leads her to Billie. Headstart teacher Billie also desires a family of her own and tries to make one with Nick, her musician boyfriend. But Nick isn't sure he can be what Billie needs him to be, especially once Billie discovers she is pregnant.

Yet the biggest discovery for either of them is that white Trish and African-American Billie...are sisters.

With CHILDREN OF THE WATERS, Carleen Brice examines "love, loss, race, and reunion" in this story about families. By way of an unassuming yet arrow-sharp prose, Ms. Brice invites her readers to consider what role does or should race play in identity and in whom one chooses to love, and what constitutes family. She also forces a look at the many faces of religion and spirituality.

Trish, the dog-loving, sugar addict, searches for the sister she'd thought dead, only to find an health-food eating, African-dancing, spiritual woman who doesn't seem to like her very much. Yet Trish and Billie discover, despite their differences in race and upbringing—Trish in a poor family and Billie in an upper middle class one—they have much in common. Both sisters desire family and are doing their best to craft one from their messy lives.

Although it took a few chapters for the story to sink its hooks in me, once gripped, I was more than willing to hang on for the ride. At times, I found myself relating to Trish, and at other times to Billie, proving what I believe is the central point of CHILDREN OF THE WATERS. We're all alike beneath the skin.