Advertisement ::

Enlarge Cartoon

The Lost Daughter, Diane Chamberlain

There are over 500 pages in Diane Chamberlain’s The Lost Daughter and, after about 100 of them, I almost abandoned the read. We meet Corinne and, with her, experience her mother’s astonishing revelation that she has significant information about the Timothy Gleason kidnapping case that happened 27 years earlier. She knows he didn’t kill pregnant Genevieve Russell and her baby because she was there.

We then leap back in time and follow CeeCee Wilkes, the sixteen-year old who became involved in the kidnapping. She seems astonishingly naive and the story seems implausible. However, the narrative speed increases and the reader is hooked.

When CeeCee delivers the baby and proceeds to rear Corinne as her own, under a new identity, the potential complications are obvious and it is exciting to follow the story as it unravels, until Gleason is in court 27 years later. The consequences of  CeeCee’s revelation provide intriguing studies of relationships and the story finishes in a very satisfactory way.

Reviewers compare this novel to Jodi Picoult’s writing. If you enjoy her stories about family dilemmas and crises, you will probably enjoy The Lost Daughter.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.