WHO IS EDDIE LEONARD?

Shortly after the death of the grandmother who raised him, Eddie—who knows no other family save an uncle who once gave him a dog, then took it away, and who has since disappeared—sees a notice about Jason Diaz, missing since the age of three. Jason's face so resembles Eddie's that the 14-year-old is sure they are one and the same. The easily traced Diazes are a contrast to Eddie's gruff, abusive grandmother: Connie, a musician, her divorced husband Bruce, a dentist, and their daughter Miller, younger than Eddie, are good people who take Eddie in (after some indecision) without really assessing his claim. Affection grows on both sides, but when Bruce finds proof that Eddie is not Jason, and the boy leaves on his own, neither parent truly wishes him to return. The plot is intriguing, and Eddie does answer the title's question to his own, and readers', satisfaction. But though parents yearning against hope for a lost child's return may well behave surprisingly, the Diazes' actions are too implausible to credit. They trust Eddie too easily, and with too much. Harder to accept—largely because none of the characters is developed in depth—is the love that blossoms so easily between them; it's especially unlikely that a boy with Eddie's troubled past could assume such a compliant faáade, no matter how much he longed for a family. Still, entertaining; but for a deeper and more astute, look at this theme, try Alcock's taut The Cuckoo Sister (1986). (Fiction. 12-16)