An Unexpected Family Member

The Other Daughter by Miralee Ferrell was a book with a twist that kept me reading, wanting to find out what happened next.

The main character, Susanne Carson, was sitting in her living room waiting for her husband David to pick her up for a birthday dinner, when she heard a knock on the door. Her children were with their grandmother, and she was excited about a night alone with her husband. But on her doorstep stood a bedraggled girl, about 13 years old, who said that Susanne's husband was her father.

Susanne discovered that the girl's mother had died and she had been living with an uncle, who drove her to the Carson's house and dropped her off without waiting to find out how she would be accepted.

The plot thickened as Susanne discovered that her husband had an affair before their marriage, and this child was truly his.

Susanne's daughter, Megan, her mother, and David's father all welcomed the girl, but Susanne found acceptance hard to find. The turmoil she went through as she vacillated between forgiving her husband or leaving him, and whether she could accept another daughter into her family was an evaluation of her Christian faith. The book goes to great depths to deal with Susanne's feelings and decisions.

This story shows how people might react when they discover their spouse has made mistakes before marriage, and the strength that one needs when a spouse is blindsided by a situation such as this. This is a different sort of Christian fiction with a twist at the end, when the uncle and his live-in girlfriend reappeared.

The story proves that sometimes we have unexpected twists and bends in the road of life, and we have to make decisions that will change everything that we think is safe and comfortable in order to come to grips with it. 

I won't give away the ending, but I think if you decide to read this book, you will be reading long past your bedtime.

The author, Miralee Ferrel, wrote this debut novel in 2007, then she wrote a sequel focusing on a woman you meet in the book. She then did some historial fiction. This is an author you might like to keep an eye on in the future.