SISTERS

A letter from her late mother turns a would-be curator’s world upside down.

Returning to the Boston suburbs after graduate school seemed a natural step for Alex Woods—or would have seemed natural had both her parents not died in a car crash shortly before her graduation. Now Alex is back, cleaning out her childhood home and looking for work in one of Boston’s many galleries. Her parents’ attorney has quite a surprise for her. Her mother left a letter for Alex, an only child, telling her that she had a baby when she was a teenager. Mr. Killebrew agrees to have a private detective search for the child, given up for adoption shortly after her birth. But the results of the search shock Alex: Her half sister Dory is in prison for the murder of Lauren, the natural child of her adoptive parents, Garth and Elaine Colson. Stunned, Alex visits Dory and finds her half sister bitter and guarded. Marisol Torres, a law student working with the Justice Initiative at New England Law School, believes that Dory may have grounds for an appeal; her public defender advised Dory to plead guilty without attempting to gather any evidence that might have exonerated her. Alex helps Marisol find evidence that Dory was misrepresented. Getting her conviction overturned, however, is not the same as proving Dory innocent. As the sisters come to know each other, Alex wonders whether she made the right decision to find Dory and help her. Is she putting herself, her new career and her blossoming friendship with college professor Seth Paige at risk for a sister she lived 26 years without knowing she had?

The latest from MacDonald, a longtime specialist in family potboilers (Missing Child, 2012, etc.), won’t disappoint her fans.