Everything to Gain

Mallory Keswick can't imagine how her life could possibly be better. She has a wonderful, fulfilling marriage to a man who loves, supports, and nurtures her. She has a lovely home and beautiful twins who bring joy to her days, to all of which she devotes herself wholeheartedly. Mallory feels she has finally found the elusive sense of family that never quite rang true in her own childhood—until an exceptionally cruel act of violence tears apart the fabric of her happiness. Devastated, distraught, and wondering how she will ever go on, suddenly Mallory's spirit is being tested as never before, forcing her to discover new reserves of courage and strength to confront the darkness that has left her with nothing more to lose and . . .

Mallory revels in the happiness she has found with her successful husband and their twins. Life seems almost perfect until a cruel act of random violence tears apart the fabric of her happiness. In her search for salvation, it will take the wisdom of an older woman and the discovery of her own business talents to make Mal believe in herself again.

Mallory Keswick can't imagine how her life could possibly be better. She has a wonderful, fulfilling marriage to a man who loves, supports, and nurtures her. She has a lovely home and beautiful twins who bring joy to her days, to all of which she devotes herself wholeheartedly. Mallory feels she has finally found the elusive sense of family that never quite rang true in her own childhood—until an exceptionally cruel act of violence tears apart the fabric of her happiness. Devastated, distraught, and wondering how she will ever go on, suddenly Mallory's spirit is being tested as never before, forcing her to discover new reserves of courage and strength to confront the darkness that has left her with nothing more to lose and ...

Publishers Weekly

Bradford weighs in with a maudlin saga about a woman's struggle to go on after a devastating tragedy. Her narrator, New York wife and mother Mallory Keswick, feels she is showered with blessings, but just as the family is making plans to go to London for Christmas, her husband, twin children and dog are murdered in an attempted carjacking. Depressed and contemplating suicide, Mal flees to London, where she slowly learns to accept her losses. Returning to the States, she turns the family's Connecticut weekend retreat into a successful business venture and eventually meets a man who is able to breach her emotional barricades. Spanning five years and two continents, Bradford's chronicle offers several affecting passages--but when Mal continues to mention the loss of her dog in the same tragic litany as her husband and children, credibility evaporates. Monotonous inventory listings of the trappings of material success slow the narrative momentum, as does the author's flat prose and tin-ear dialogue, especially ludicrous since Mal is supposedly a Radcliffe graduate. Nor does Bradford reach beyond her tried and true romantic formula for greater complexity--or even to tie up some potentially intriguing plot lines that mysteriously evaporate after they are introduced. Major ad/promo ; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selection ; audio rights to HarperAudio ; author tour. (Aug.)

Barbara Taylor Bradford started her writing career in the 1960s as a journalist who felt destined to become "a hard-bitten reporter in a dirty trenchcoat." However, her breakout bestseller, A Woman of Substance (1979), sparked her prolific career as the author of thrilling novels of romance and intrigue.