TANGLED VIOLETS

In this novel, an adopted woman finally finds her birth mother and father, a remarkable discovery that delivers both joy and confusion.

Elizabeth Schmidt had a pleasant upbringing, but as an adopted child, she felt the pangs of a haunting incompleteness. The difference between her and her adoptive family “lay silent and undisturbed between us like a sleeping dog with an uncertain pedigree.” Despite Elizabeth’s great academic and professional success, her personal life is not fully satisfying despite three marriages and five children. Then her adoptive mother, Marie, lets it slip that she received a communication from Alice Maher, Elizabeth’s birth mother’s sister, possibly about an inheritance of some kind, but proceeded to destroy the letter. Elizabeth decides to find Alice—she even hires a private detective—and learns that her mother, Liddy, is actually alive, despite Marie’s declarations to the contrary. Martin, with great subtly and sensitivity, chronicles Elizabeth’s poignant search for her true self and her yearning to fill the “proverbial black hole” of her unknown ancestry. But Elizabeth’s initial euphoria after locating Liddy discovers a darker counterpoint when she also finds her father, Ned, and falls romantically in love with him. Elizabeth soon realizes that Liddy, despite being married to a man named Andy, harbors her own romantic designs on Ned. Martin’s tale is a complex, entangled one filled with unpredictable twists and turns. The story forthrightly discusses the astonishingly illicit affair between Elizabeth and Ned, a provocative subplot handled without a hint of prurient sensationalism. The author deftly shows the emotionally bifurcated world that Elizabeth now inhabits: “But at that moment, I realized I was more like Marie than Liddy. Applying a suitcase full of makeup to perfect my facial features or wearing sexy clothes to draw attention to myself was simply not who I was. Any attempt to reconfigure me as such was destined to fail. Although the beautiful world of Liddy attracted me, I lived in the unadorned and practical world of Marie.” This is a moving novel, crackling with sexual volatility and emotional intelligence.

An engrossing emotional drama, both shocking and thoughtful.