Only Child

Easy-going grad student Elena Jacobs goes on the family tree warpath when she finds out her mother Anna is not the only child she said she was, nor is her thesis advisor Alison as €œno-next-of-kin€ as she blithely claims. Their covers are blown by a chance discovery in an attic: Anna has three siblings, and Alison€s mother (not so deceased as reported) is one of them.

Bafflingly, it seems to be long-standing family protocol to fabricate on the subject of the common gene pool. Since the tragic death of Anna€s mother over forty years ago, snipping people out of the family portrait €“ and lying about it €“ has been the modus operandi. While Anna is uneasy, Alison is dismayed when Elena announces her intention to root out the conspiracy and end it.

One by one, she finds her grandmother€s lost family. But what Elena uncovers is not a joint effort to hide a single dark family secret. There are many secrets, private secrets, each sealed off by a different lie. Abuse, abandonment, betrayal, murder...and something even more sinister lurk behind so many desperate attempts to survive €“ and protect €“ by denying the blood ties that would bind.

Inevitably, Elena€s quest opens pathways between people who have shunned each other for decades. But as the mystery deepens around one child disowned at birth, she begins to fear that she is exposing the ever-growing cadre of people she cares about to uncontrollable, devastating consequences.

Told from the viewpoints of the three women, Only Child is by turns heart-rending, humorous, chilling, and affirming, as each of them revisits what they thought they knew about their own lives in the process of accepting truths about the past and present lives that connect them.