#MMBBR @SheReadsBookCLB Books of Winter WHAT WAS MINE by Helen Klein Ross @helenkleinross

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BOOKS OF WINTER PICK:

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 superstore—and 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. It’s a secret she manages to keep for over two decades—from her daughter, the babysitter who helped raise her, family, coworkers, and friends.

When Lucy’s 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, Mia’s 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.

Helen Klein Ross is a poet and novelist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and in The Iowa Review where it won the 2014 Iowa Review award in poetry. She graduated from Cornell University and received an MFA from The New School. She spent decades as a writer/creative director at global ad agencies in NYC and San Francisco. Helen lives with her husband in New York and Salisbury, CT. For more information, check http://www.helenkleinross.com

• This book was really remarkable! A great job was done writing such distinct voices that add many rich layers to the story!!!  It is one of those books that you find hard to put down.  I loved the short chapters and that each chapter was a different voice.  As I said above, I felt that the voice change on chapters allowed the reader to become deeply invested int he story.,  It allowed the reader the luxury of knowing what many people were thinking about the events as they unfolded.  I could not help but put myself in each od their shoes and try to determine what I would do in their situation.  I read and listened to this book via Audible.  I felt that this is one of those books that is amazing to listen to due to the variety of characters that are voiced.  There is something about this book that moved me, it will not soon be forgotten and I look forward to more books by Helen Klein Ross.  5 stars

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