Author: Lisa Wingate
The story is engrossing, engaging and heart wrenching! What makes it more so is that it is loosely based on a true story/scandal.
The story alternates between past and present. The past is a family living happily on a boat on the Mississippi - father, mother and 5 kids. The eldest of them being Rill Foss. Then the fateful day arrives when their mother has to deliver a baby and due to complications she has to be taken to the hospital - away from home. While the mother and father are in the hospital, the kids are "taken away" by so called authorities and given to an orphanage run by Georgian Tann. As Rill keeps on trying of ways to go back to their home along with all her siblings, she can see her siblings being adopted one by one. Then one of her sisters is killed in the orphanage because she wouldn't listen. Rill herself faces sexual assault. Then she too is adopted by one of the families along with her sister.
The present day is a setting around a Senator's family. Avery is the daughter of the Senator who has cancer. She was a lawyer and came back home to be groomed into the position her father has if need arises. While doing one of the events for her father she runs into a woman who holds onto her hand and is not willing to leave her. The nurses had to take her away. She also took away her bracelet and claimed that was hers. This intrigues Avery much and she wants to find out the why behind it. She starts digging. The more she digs, the more questions she has. Along the way she meets people looking at whom makes her question her choices for her life.
