Fortune's Daughter
by Alice Hoffman

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Book Reviews of Fortune's Daughter

Book Review: A writer with the Midas Touch
Summary: 4 Stars

The characters in FORTUNE'S DAUGHTER are multi-faceted. Rae, a young woman who finds herself pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend, embraces her approaching motherhood. Distanced from her parents, Rae casts about for someone to help guide her through natural childbirth. She chooses Lila Gray, a pyschic reader of tea leaves, and it is Lila who breaks our hearts.

Living with her own demons, Lila is the most beautifully rendered of all the people in this story. Lila has yet to forgive herself for giving up the baby girl she had at eighteen, allowing her parents to place the infant for adoption. The parents are unwilling to help their daughter, turning their backs as Lila endures the pain of childbirth with only her cousin, a nurse, to help her. The agonies of birth are stunningly rendered, the images powerful and recognizable.

Lila's emotional development is arrested during this mournful time, and death becomes her suitor, courting daily. With the spring thaw, Lila is seduced back to life, falls deeply in love and marries. She spends the following years running from a truth she has been unable to share with her husband.

Rae's advancing pregnancy torments Lila with thoughts of her own lost daughter. She packs her suitcase, leaving with no explanation, determined to find her child.

What Lila discovers is not what she's expected, dreamed about. Returning home, her mind struggles with acceptance, unable to see little else, including her patiently loving husband. The marriage is strained as Lila isolates in her world of imagination. Finally, Lila is given the courage to release the past, lay it to rest, and reach toward the future. Hoffman creates such a fully realized Lila, that she virtually walks off the page, the reader wishing for this woman's happiness.

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