The baby’s birth parents are briefly introduced and then come back for more of a role once the secret of the baby is in the open.  The delicate balance of an untraditional family (Skip, Lydia and Faith) is easy to upset.  I admire (although don’t always like) the characters in this book, particularly Skip, who demonstrates a type of unconditional love in his willingness to let Faith go if that is best for her.  While this book moved swiftly for me, it was not one that I couldn’t put down.  If I were to give it a rating out of five stars it would be about a three.  I was glad I read it but probably won’t read it again.

This is the story of Kate and Ellen Gulden.  Kate is the mother of three children and when they are in their early adulthood she is diagnosed with cancer.  Ellen, her daughter, has always been closer to her father and she lets her father talk her into giving up her job and apartment in New York to move home and care for her mother.  Ellen does this reluctantly, but learns to appreciate the time she gets to spend learning who her mother is and building a relationship with her that she never had.

During this period Kate’s health declines at a rapid pace until it is decided that the chemotherapy is not effective and the focus needs to be on keeping her comfortable.  Ellen does everything that she can to be a caregiver.  She learns about the medications, helps her mother bathe, cooks, cleans, feeds her and tries to provide any way that she can.  Her mother is in pain and goes through a struggle so that when she dies it is almost a relief to Ellen.  Although soon a new trial is started when an autopsy shows that her mother died of a morphine overdoes and Ellen is suspected of assisting her mother in death.

Ellen bears this load, thinking to herself that she is covering for her father who must have done what he could to end his wife’s suffering.  She is never actually indicted on the charges because the evidence isn’t enough.  Yet the court does probe into whether she thinks it is acceptable to end someones life who is terminally ill and in pain.  It raises hard questions and hard thoughts.  And she answers as a caregiver saying her thoughts were about doing what needed to be done to take care of her mother during the next hour, and no more than that.  That thinking that you support an idea and actually being able to follow through and end the life of someone you love are two very different things.

This was a very good book that dealt with hard issues.  The relationships of mothers and daughters (and fathers), cancer and the experience of dying, and thoughts related to assisted suicide.  It was a good read but it was difficult because of the issues that it dealt with.  In writing this and looking for an image of the book cover I learned that this had been made into a movie about ten years ago.  I would definitely read it first.

It is the story of a woman named Fran Benedetto who married her husband Bobby when she was young and madly in love.  She worked as a nurse and Bobby works as a police officer.  They have a ten-year old son together.  They lead a seemingly normal life that covers the physical abuse that she has suffered from her husband for most of their marriage and her fear of what will happen if she leaves him.  It describes the changes from loving passion to quick violence and the hope that something will change.

A woman comes to speak at Fran’s hospital about abused women and ways for medical professionals to identify them.  She eventually uses this contact as a way to catapault herself into a new life, with a new name, in a new place.  Her son works to adjust to a new school and new friends without her father and Fran keeps breathing every day trying to make it from one to the next.  She lives with the daily fear that they will be found.

This was a book that once I started, I could hardly put down.  She did a good job of developing all of the characters and story lines.  I could clearly understand how Fran, her son and even her ex-husband were feeling at different points in the story.  This was a wonderful book.