Trail of Secrets
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the New York Times–bestselling author of Garden of Lies comes this haunting novel of mothers and daughters confronting their family’s dark past
Ellie Nightingale moved to New York in the early 1970s, a scared country girl with a newborn, no money, and no one to run to but her sister, a prostitute with a couch to spare. Ellie worked as hard as she could, determined to make a good life for her child, but one day the baby disappeared—kidnapped and handed over to a wealthy Connecticut couple.
Skyler Sutton has grown up with riding lessons, fine clothes, and no idea that the people who raised her aren’t her real parents. But when an accidental pregnancy forces her into the same desperate circumstances her own mother was in when she gave birth to her, Skyler is finally brought face-to-face with her past.
As three women linked together by fate move toward a shocking discovery, Eileen Goudge’s enthralling novel of romance and suspense “will keep all who love a secret riveted” (Publishers Weekly).
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Eileen Goudge including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The bonds of motherhood are yanked, twisted and stressed to the breaking point in Goudge's brazenly manipulative new novel (after Blessing in Disguise, 1994), which follows the fates of Ellie Porter Nightingale and the infant daughter stolen from her in 1972 in N.Y.C. Ellie's daughter has been raised as Skyler Sutton by a wealthy Connecticut couple who learned of the kidnapping but decided to keep their knowledge secret. Now 23, Skyler is pregnant, from a one-night stand with Manhattan cop Tony Salvatore; unwilling to raise a child, she decides to give up the baby for adoption--perhaps to one of Tony's acquaintances, that nice psychotherapist who is desperate to adopt a child: she is, of course, Ellie Porter Nightingale. The ensuing complications, though rarely unpredictable, are milked by Goudge for maximum melodrama, culminating in a swoony climax at a custody hearing. Goudge's prose, though often skillful and down-to-earth, can be plagued by too much descriptive detail and sentimentalized interior monologue. But her characters are sympathetic; her expressions of the fierce emotions of motherhood are immediate; and her crafty decision to reveal likely plot turns to her readers but not to her characters will keep all who love a secret riveted. 125,000 first printing; $125,000 ad/promo; paperback rights to Signet; Literary Guild main selection; author tour.
