Her Daughter's Eyes - Softcover

Barksdale Inclan, Jessica

3.61

544 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451205642 ISBN 13: 9780451205643

Publisher: Signet, 2003

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As she prepares for the birth of her baby, sixteen-year-old Kate, a teenager from an upper middle-class neighborhood, hides her pregnancy from her family and friends, telling no one about the approaching birth except her younger sister.

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Review:

Kate Phillips--17 years old, unmarried, and pregnant--and her younger sister Tyler have been abandoned by their parents. Cancer took their beloved mother two years before, and their father has emotionally left them, choosing to spend his time with his new girlfriend and her two young boys, returning to his home and daughters sporadically to leave money and assuage his guilty conscience.

Tyler and Kate deliver Kate's baby girl all alone, in their quiet suburban house, their BMW silently parked in the garage. Kate insists that her baby's existence must remain hidden, but inevitably, the sisters' secrets are discovered, involving the police and children's protective services. Whether their father will retain custody of his two underage daughters, whether Kate will retain custody of her new baby daughter, and whether the father of Kate's child will remain out of jail are all questionable.

Jessica Barksdale Incl�n's novel has a plot, pulled from contemporary headlines, that gives readers a true and unsettling view of American society and the low value placed on its children. While all the characters in the tale attempt to justify their actions, the essential selfishness of the adults comes through with disturbing clarity. Everyone pays a high price, but none more so than Kate and Tyler, whose youth and innocence are lost through the actions of adults who should have protected them--who, instead, use and abandon them. Powerful and poignant, Her Daughter's Eyes is an impressive debut. --Lois Faye Dyer

From the Author:

After reading so many articles about young mothers who hid their pregnancies and then either left of killed their babies, I came across one story where a teenaged mother gave birth and then hid herbaby in her bedroom closet while she went to school. While this also seems strnge, I admired this young woman's desire to keep and protect her baby, and this idea provided me the inspiration to start my novel, Her Daughter's Eyes. In the novel, Kate Phillips gets pregnant, but because of her family situation, she decides to keep it secret. The only person she lets into her secret is her younger sister Tyler, who eventually has to give up her own high school life to help her sister. The novel unfolds as does Kate's pregnancy, and everyone Kate tried to protect, including herself, must deal with the consequences of his or her actions.

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