When her grandmother, her only surviving relative, dies unexpectedly, Ruby Leander in the book Mothers and Other Liars by Amy Bourret, feels alone in the world. Deciding that she wants to start a new life, Ruby loads her Jeep with her possessions and heads for California and the ocean.  After driving for hours, Ruby stops at a rest area in Oklahoma. She is stiff from driving, hungry and thirsty. It is the middle of the night and the area is dark. After drinking a Coke, she unwraps a candy bar, but the paper blows away. As she stoops down to pick up the candy paper, she sees a bundle wrapped near the trash can. When she touches the bundle it moves and she realizes that it is a baby girl and that she is alive. Thinking that the baby has been abandoned, Ruby gently put the bundle of baby in her jeep and continues her trek to California. However, circumstances change her plans and her journey ends in New Mexico.

Nine years later Ruby has built a life for herself and her daughter. She has named the little girl Lark and has made her the center of her life. Lark has grown into a precocious child, who loves animals and old movies. Ruby works at a beauty salon as a nail technician and has a circle of loyal friends. Three years ago she met a wonderful man. They are planning a future together as a family with Lark and the baby she is now carrying.

Then one day, while at work, Ruby picks up a tabloid magazine and reads about an infant who was kidnapped. Carjackers had stolen the car while the baby was in the backseat, buckled into her car seat. The giraffe, that the child in the picture is shown clutching, is identical to the one that Lark had with her the night Ruby found her near the trash can. Ruby suddenly realizes that maybe Lark was not an abandoned baby. As Ruby compares the picture of the infant in the article with one she had taken of Lark years ago, fear becomes a reality.  She now faces a choice that no mother should have to make. Questions assail her mind: What about the baby’s parents? What will happen to her and what will happen to Lark, if she comes forward with her suspicions? But the most important question remains: What should she do - when doing what is right means destroying her family?

Kathy Thomsen
Library Director
Lexington Public Library

Review Archives

Lexington Public Library