A vibrant new voice delivers a moving tale of three women-mother, birth mother, and daughter-the choices they make and the fragile family bond they try to create and sustain across time and continents
From the time she was five years old, Lara Reid knew she was an alien. Her dark complexion and kinky-hair-so unlike her fair-skinned mother and father's-were proof that she was different. At eight she learned the word "adopted." But the tale of a far-off orphanage in Nigeria was little more another bedtime story.
Now Lara is 30 and a strange woman in a blue and black head tie is staring at her as she blows out the candles on her birthday cake. And though the woman is a stranger, Lara senses that she has known her for her entire life. She is her long-lost birth mother, Yomi, arrived from Africa.
Thanks to her steely reserve, Lara has never fully opened herself to anyone, not even her boyfriend and she is determined not to allow Yomi's sudden appearance to change her life in any way. But some things can't be controlled, no matter how hard we try, and soon Lara's life is turning upside down, filled with dangerously unfamiliar emotions that take her completely by surprise.
Torn in conflicting directions, desperate to flee, Lara knows she must face the truth about her past and the lives of her mothers, if she hopes to find peace, understanding, and acceptance of who she is-and what it means to be Lara.
