Helen Klein Ross's intimate debut novel about a kidnapping, What Was Mine, makes determining right and wrong--justice and crime--a fuzzy shade of gray, nearly impossible to pinpoint and full of ambiguity.
The law has no doubt that Lucy Wakefield committed a felony when she carried Marilyn and Tom Featherstone's four-month-old daughter, Natalie, out of a New Jersey IKEA store and drove away with her. But 21 years later, when the truth is finally exposed and Natalie--aka Mia Wakefield--is a college senior preparing for law school, the ramifications aren't so cut and dried. They are overshadowed by the emotion of humanity, the intensity of memories and other forces that don't have much legal weight.
Ross explores those forces by telling the story from many characters' points of view, primarily those of Lucy, Marilyn and Natalie/Mia. The novel offers insights from several others, including Lucy's sister, Marilyn's second husband and their children, and Mia's Chinese nanny. As one character's rage sweeps the reader into its twisting storm, the next character chimes in to snatch empathy for herself. This emotional tornado illustrates how powerful and far-reaching the eye of the storm can be. It also highlights the psychological repercussions for which legal penalties can never compensate.
A powerful plot told with exactly the right approach, What Was Mine is capable of sparking plenty of discussion, whether it is over a water cooler, in a book club or simply in the reader's mind. --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts