Fiction, Fiction Subjects

The Most Wanted

Name: The Most Wanted
Author: Jacquelyn Mitchard
ISBN: 9781101209172

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

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Overview

Arley, a 14-year-old honor student in Texas, begins writing to Dillon LeGrande, an inmate of the nearby correctional facility. Gradually, she falls in love with him, and they are secretly married. When she becomes pregnant, she is rejected by her family and moves in with an activist lawyer, a woman who is having troubles with her boyfriend, a death row attorney. Dillon escapes from prison and goes on a crime spree, and while Arley waits for a reunion with him she must cope with not only a forest fire but her maddened and violent sister.

About the Author, Jacquelyn Mitchard

Jacquelyn Mitchard

Tackling themes of death, grief, and emotional turmoil without lapsing into cheap sentimentality, Jacquelyn Mitchard has made a career of pulling the heartstrings without patronizing her readers. With her debut novel The Deep End of the Ocean, the first book ever to be featured in Oprah’s Book Club, Mitchard began a career distinguished by intelligent and entertaining explorations of life’s darkest moments.

Biography

"Jacquelyn Mitchard has considered changing her name legally to The Deep End of the Ocean. This is because her own name is much less well-known than the title of her first book," so read the opening lines of Mitchard's biography on her web site. Granted, the writer is best known for the novel that holds the distinct honor of being the very first pick in Oprah Winfrey's book club, but Mitchard is also responsible for a number of other bestsellers, all baring her distinctive ability to tackle emotional subject matter without lapsing into cloying sentimentality.

Mitchard got her start as a newspaper journalist in the ‘70s, but first established herself as a writer to watch in 1985 when she published Mother Less Child, a gut wrenching account of her own miscarriage. Though autobiographical in nature, Mother Less Child introduced the themes of grief and coping that would often resurface in her fiction. These themes were particularly prevalent in the debut novel that would nab Mitchard her greatest notoriety. The Deep End of the Ocean tells of the depression that grips a woman and her son following the disappearance of her younger son. Like Mother Less Child, the novel was also based on a personal tragedy, the death of her husband, and the author's very real grief contributes to the emotional authenticity of the book.

The Deep End of the Ocean became a commercial and critical smash, lauded by every publication from People Magazine to Newsweek. It exemplified Mitchard's unique approach to her subject. In lesser hands, such a story might have sunk into precious self-reflection. However Mitchard approaches her story as equal parts psychological drama and suspenseful thriller. "I like to read stories in which things happen," she told Book Reporter. "I get very impatient with books that are meditations - often beautiful ones - on a single character's thoughts and reactions. I like a story that roller coasters from one event to the next, peaks and valleys."

The Deep End of the Ocean undoubtedly changed Mitchard's life. She was still working part time at the University of Wisconsin-Madison writing speeches when the novel got Oprah's seal of approval and went into production as a major motion picture starring Michelle Pfeiffer. She didn't even consider leaving her job until, as she recounted to Book Slut.com, "my boss finally said to me, ‘You know, kiddo, people whose books have sold this many copies and are being made into movies don't have this part-time job.'" So, she left her job despite misgivings and embarked upon a writing career that would produce such powerful works as The Most Wanted, Twelve Times Blessed, and The Breakdown Lane. She has also written two non-fictional volumes about peace activist Jane Addams.

Mitchard's latest Cage of Stars tells of Veronica Swan, a twelve-year old girl living in a Mormon community whose life is completely upturned when her sisters are murdered. Again, a story of this nature could have easily played out as a banal tear jerker, but Mitchard allows Veronica to take a more active role in the novel, setting out to avenge the death of her sisters. Consequently, Case of Stars is another example of Mitchard's ability to turn the tables on convention and produce a story with both emotional resonance and a page-turning narrative, making for a novel created with the express purpose of pleasing her fans. "Narrative is not in fashion in the novels of our current era; reflection is," she told Book Reporter. "But buying a book and reading it is a substantial investment of time and money. I want to take readers on a journey full circle. They deserve it."

Good To Know

Mitchard is certainly most famous for her sophisticated adult novels, yet she has also written two children's novels, Rosalie and Starring Prima, as well as Baby Bat's Lullaby, a picture book. She currently has three new children's books in development.

Now that Mitchard has officially scored a successful writing career, what could be left for the writer to achieve? Well, according to her web site, her "truest ambition" is to make an appearance on the popular TV show Law and Order.

Reviews

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Editorials

Chicago Tribune

Compelling, appealing, distinctive.

People Magazine

Poignantly told...Anyone who has ever fallen for an unsuitable love will respond to Mitchard's tale of the yearning that transcends reason.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Despite portentous foreshadowing, Mitchard second novel never achieves the dramatic momentum and the emotional immediacy of her acclaimed fiction debut, The Deep End of the Ocean. But her depiction of two female protagonists is so large-hearted and wise that readers undoubtedly will be engrossed in their story. At 14, Arlington "Arley" Mowbray is a sensitive, conscientious and atypical teenager in a small, tacky South Texas town. She writes poetry, for one thing, and, instead of dating boys, she is a virtual slave to her hard-as-nails mother, whose lack of maternal instincts is shocking. When love-starved Arley begins corresponding with 23-year-old Dillon Thomas LeGrande, in jail for armed robbery, she is seduced by the poetry he writes and, with the reluctant help of public defender Annie Singer, gains permission to marry him. Soon, protective Annie takes a pregnant Arley into her home and heart, complicating her own relationship with her fiance a death-row lawyer. Eventually, Dillon's true nature as a psychopath erupts, putting Arley and others in mortal danger.

Mitchard's facility with intertwining plot lines results in a surprise-packed conclusion (with perhaps one surprise too many). Her depiction of the dizzy rapture of first love, and her insights into the maternal bond (Arley's with her infant daughter; Annie's with Arley, her surrogate daughter) are deeply affecting. Yet readers will find a troubling credibility problem. That studious Arley can transcend her culturally bereft upbringing is at least plausible, but it is unlikely that bad-boy Dillon would have the sensibility, background or vocabulary to create the poems attributed to him (actually written by Mitchard's friend, poet Sharron Singleton). Since so much of the plot hinges on Dillon's gift for poetry, the reader is keenly aware of this major flaw.

Library Journal

It's clear from the start that bad things will happen in this book. And it's just as clear that Mitchard (The Deep End of the Ocean) is no one-book wonder. In alternating first-person chapters, 14-year-old Arlington (Arley) Mowbray and almost-40 attorney Anne Singer tell their stories. Arley, the youngest of her unmarried mother's three children, virtually raised herself, and her lack of love at home makes her susceptible to attention from prisoner Dillon LeGrande, whom she weds after three months of correspondence. Denied a conjugal visit with Dillon, Arley seeks out Annie, who feels an instant attachment to her young client; Annie hears her biological clock ticking, but her longtime companion, Stuart, doesn't want a child. So Annie turns surrogate mother, assisting Arley with the conjugal visit and through her ensuing pregnancy and childbirth, as Annie's life takes major turns and danger long hinted at is realized. Mitchard has created unforgettable characters in evocative Texas settings in this assured, accomplished, and achingly lovely novel -- Michele Leber, Fairfax County Public Library, Arlington, Virginia

Library Journal

School Library Journal

YA--Teen readers will connect with Arley Mowbray's thought processes if not with her unusual situation. Against the advice of others and her own common sense, the 14-year-old falls in love with, marries, and bears the child of Dillon, who resides in prison until he escapes. Their attraction grew through writing letters, and Arley knew little of the man Dillon had become. She is determined to raise her child under better conditions than she experienced, and is helped on many levels by her friend Annie Singer. The various types and dimensions of motherhood subtly come through in the well-designed characterizations. The writing is skilled enough to make readers care about the direction Arley's life takes, and the plot twists and vivid characters are sure to appeal to many YAs.--Catherine Charvat, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA

Kirkus Reviews

Part thriller and part romance, this quick-read melodrama by Mitchard (the Oprah-anointed The Deep End of the Ocean, 1996) tries to keep quite a few narrative balls in the air, juggling jailhouse love, teen pregnancy, escaped convicts, death row lawyers, biological clocks, and the whole capricious character of the lone star state of Texas. When Arlington Mowbray starts writing to Dillon LeGrande at his current place of residence, the Solamente River Correctional Facility, she doesn't expect much more than to fulfill a dare. At 14, what Arley, an honor student and track star, doesn't know about men could fill a book. And when Dillon's letters begin to arrive, full of poetry and cowboy cordiality, Arley starts to fall in love. She visits him, and the two decide to marry secretly. Which is where Annie Singer, lawyer for a women's defense organization, comes in, helping Arley arrange for her first conjugal visit with her now husband. After a tender and wild night in a trailer by the prison, Arley discovers that she's pregnant, is kicked out by her mother, and moves in with Annie and her longtime boyfriend Stuart. Arley's pregnancy only serves to emphasize the stalemate of Annie's relationship to Stuart, a death row attorney whose crusades for his clients always take precedence over a private life. When Dillon escapes from jail, Arley is placed in hiding in an isolated cabin, learning only from news broadcasts about the antics of the "Highwayman," the romantic persona Dillon has created (based on their favorite poem) for himself as he politely plunders the state. Arley waits for him to come and carry her away. Meanwhile, she's threatened by a forest fire and by the arrival of variousviolent family members—a crazy sister among them—and is surprised overall by a few too many revelations. A big, readable novel, but also one neither surprising nor penetrating enough to be especially memorable.