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Overview
Laura Barrett has it all — a supportive husband, a beautiful baby daughter, and a career in television that has made her face familiar to millions. But there's a shadow over Laura's happiness. And when a man approaches her after she leaves work and calls her "Marta," Laura knows that what she's feared for so long has finally arrived. The postcard with the coffin on it confirms that her idyll is over.
Marta was a teenager, growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, when she did something terrible one night in a run-down motel, and she's been running from it ever since. For twenty years, Laura has been trying to erase Marta from her memory. Now a man from her past is confronting her, demanding answers. At first, Laura thinks she can control the situation. But suddenly, she's facing every mother's nightmare: her daughter is kidnapped.
To get her baby back, Laura's going to have to risk her marriage, her career, and her life, and finally face up to what happened that night so long ago.
Synopsis
Laura Barrett has it all — a supportive husband, a beautiful baby daughter, and a career in television that has made her face familiar to millions. But there's a shadow over Laura's happiness. And when a man approaches her after she leaves work and calls her "Marta," Laura knows that what she's feared for so long has finally arrived. The postcard with the coffin on it confirms that her idyll is over.
Marta was a teenager, growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, when she did something terrible one night in a run-down motel, and she's been running from it ever since. For twenty years, Laura has been trying to erase Marta from her memory. Now a man from her past is confronting her, demanding answers. At first, Laura thinks she can control the situation. But suddenly, she's facing every mother's nightmare: her daughter is kidnapped.
To get her baby back, Laura's going to have to risk her marriage, her career, and her life, and finally face up to what happened that night so long ago.
Publishers Weekly
A cautionary tale about trying to build a life on a marsh of secrets and lies, Listfield's fifth novel (after Acts of Love) is a solidly crafted, increasingly suspenseful narrative. At 38, Laura Barrett is living the American dream. Born in Germany to a trampy, teenage mother and later raised in a fleabag motel in Florida with a groping stepfather, she now has a loving husband, an infant daughter and a great new job: she's been tapped by the network execs to become co-anchor of the national evening news. But success exposes Laura's past. Threatened by a former lover who turns up in New York, and by various cryptic messages, she is terrified that certain unsavory facts (she was a teenage prostitute and was involved in a possible murder) may come to light. Neatly juxtaposing the contrasts between Laura's carefully reinvented life and her secret past, Listfield evokes both backgrounds with fidelity. The newsroom scenes are so detailed that readers will understand exactly what it feels like to be in the hot seat when a big story breaks. When her baby is kidnapped and Laura begins to realize that events could put her in the media spotlight, Listfield ratchets up the tension and fully involves the reader in her heroine's 's harrowing ordeal. (July)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
A cautionary tale about trying to build a life on a marsh of secrets and lies, Listfield's fifth novel (after Acts of Love) is a solidly crafted, increasingly suspenseful narrative. At 38, Laura Barrett is living the American dream. Born in Germany to a trampy, teenage mother and later raised in a fleabag motel in Florida with a groping stepfather, she now has a loving husband, an infant daughter and a great new job: she's been tapped by the network execs to become co-anchor of the national evening news. But success exposes Laura's past. Threatened by a former lover who turns up in New York, and by various cryptic messages, she is terrified that certain unsavory facts (she was a teenage prostitute and was involved in a possible murder) may come to light. Neatly juxtaposing the contrasts between Laura's carefully reinvented life and her secret past, Listfield evokes both backgrounds with fidelity. The newsroom scenes are so detailed that readers will understand exactly what it feels like to be in the hot seat when a big story breaks. When her baby is kidnapped and Laura begins to realize that events could put her in the media spotlight, Listfield ratchets up the tension and fully involves the reader in her heroine's 's harrowing ordeal. (July)Library Journal
Laura Barrett has it all: she's just been made coanchor of the national network news; her baby daughter, Sophie, is a joy; and she and husband David are very much in love. Then Jack Pierce appears, asking Laura why she left him years earlier, never to return. Soon, we learn of Laura's past as the illegitimate daughter of a slovenly German immigrant married to an abusive motel owner in a jerkwater Florida town. There, at age 16, Laura accidentally killed a guest who had been paying her for sexand left Jack to take the blame as she reinvented herself. Then one morning the unthinkable happens: Laura's daughter, Sophie, is kidnapped. The investigation forces Laura to reveal her past, which threatens her marriage, her job, and her life. This novel by the author of Acts of Love (LJ 6/15/94) offers a suspenseful and interesting look at the life of TV's elite. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/97.]Barbara Maslekoff, Ohioana Lib., ColumbusKirkus Reviews
The revelation of a nasty, melodramatic secret brings disgrace, danger, and redemption to a glamorous but self-absorbed TV news-anchor, in the fifth and most commercial novel yet from Listfield (Acts of Love, 1994, etc.).Even if Laura Barnett's cool, blond, telegenic beauty is mostly due to plastic surgery, her decade of ambitious, small-town newscasting triumphs have blessed her with the coveted job of co-anchoring the national news. Add to this her perfectly dedicated academic husband David, her infant daughter Sophie, a tony Manhattan apartment, a nanny she can trust, and a salary large enough to make designer dresses a wiggle instead of a stretch, and it's a wonder that Barnett has a gripe. But whine she does: about no one appreciating her talent, hollowness of fame, and the tension of dealing with a glossy public image that she can't control. Then who should show up among her throng of stage-door admirers but the annoying Jack Pierce—a bony twerp in a seersucker suit who took the fall for what may have been a murder committed in self-defense by Barnett when she had a different face, different looks, and a different name. After pestering Barnett, he vanishes at about the same time as Barnett's daughter. Barnett's career comes tumbling down as the kidnapping compels her to confess her trashy past to her husband, her boss, the cops, and a vapid Vanity Fair reporter. Such reckless truth-telling brings on a predictable but unconvincing redemption, followed by a violent confrontation with Pierce, though it's not clear at the end if Listfield's feckless heroine hasn't swapped one delusion for another. "I'm damaged goods," she snaps sarcastically to her fatuous, Dan Ratherish co-anchor Quinn Hartley. "The best I can hope for is a shot on Oprah."
Smoothly told, realistically detailed cautionary tale buried in a frothy view of female yuppie wish fulfillment, roman à clef media gossip, and soap-opera morality.