What Was Mine
Helen Klein Ross, 2016
Gallery Books
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781476732350
Summary
Simply told but deeply affecting, this urgent novel unravels the heartrending yet unsentimental tale of a woman who kidnaps a baby in a superstore—and gets away with it for twenty-one years.
Lucy Wakefield is a seemingly ordinary woman who does something extraordinary in a desperate moment: she takes a baby girl from a shopping cart and raises her as her own. It’s a secret she manages to keep for over two decades—from her daughter, the babysitter who helped raise her, family, coworkers, and friends.
When Lucy’s now-grown daughter Mia discovers the devastating truth of her origins, she is overwhelmed by confusion and anger and determines not to speak again to the mother who raised her. She reaches out to her birth mother for a tearful reunion, and Lucy is forced to flee to China to avoid prosecution.
What follows is a ripple effect that alters the lives of many and challenges our understanding of the very meaning of motherhood.
Author Helen Klein Ross, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, weaves a powerful story of upheaval and resilience told from the alternating perspectives of Lucy, Mia, Mia’s birth mother, and others intimately involved in the kidnapping.
What Was Mine is a compelling tale of motherhood and loss, of grief and hope, and the life-shattering effects of a single, irrevocable moment. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1954 (?)
• Raised—King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.S., Cornell University; M.F.A., New School for Social Research
• Awards—Shorty Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York, and Salisbury, Connecticut
Helen wrote her first novel in a composition notebook (you remember those). She was only eight, and the story revolved around a family of birds—proof that she's been interested in family dynamics for a long time.
Ross earned her B.S. from Cornell University and her M.F.A. from The New School for Social Research in New York. She spent the next 20 years working in advertising, in New York City and San Francisco, as a writer and creative director for top agencies and global brands.
When social media took off, Ross created her own blog, AdBroad. She then became noted for channeling Don Draper's wife Betty, from Mad Men, into an online presence. Ross gave Betty her own Twitter acount—@Betty Draper—a profile on Linked-In and Betty's own blog where she could kvetch about the woes of a 1960s housewife. These and other cross-platform type narratives, earned Ross a good deal of attention in the press and online media, including an article in the Wall Street Journal, as well as a Shorty Award. (Yes, the "Oscars for Twitter." Really.)
Ross is also an author of note. Her poetry, essays and fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, and in literary journals and anthologies. Her first novel Making It: A Novel of Madison Avenue appeared in 2013, and her second, What Was Mine, in 2016. The second book debuted on January 5 and was sold out on Amazon before 8 A.M. People magazine selected it as a "Best New Book of 2016."
Ross lives with her husband in New York City and Salisbury, Connecticut. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
A suspenseful, moving look at twisted maternal love and the limits of forgiveness (Best New Books Pick).
People
Although the process by which Mia’s abduction comes out seems unrealistic and the shifting first-person narration doesn’t fully cohere, Ross deftly creates genuinely sympathetic characters and emotionally resonant prose around what could have felt sensationalistic.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) [A] compelling and moving story that asks many questions about family, love, and justice.... Moving at a hard-to-put-down, breathless pace, this is suspenseful domestic fiction at its best. —Jan Marry, Williamsburg Regional Lib., VA
Library Journal
What Was Mine is an emotionally-grounded read.... By giving readers the chance to examine what may be unforgivable, Ross brings an entirely new twist to the usual abduction story. Fans of Gillian Flynn and Maria Semple will enjoy the intensely introspective What Was Mine.
Booklist
[An] improbable premise that an otherwise successful, stable woman would help herself to a stranger's baby. But suspending disbelief when reading well-written fiction can be pleasant. Ross' prose is both readable and enjoyable, and she touches on interesting ideas about identity, family, and the malleability of the human psyche.
Kirkus Reviews
A powerful plot told with exactly the right approach, What Was Mine is capable of sparking plenty of discussion, whether it is over a water cooler, in a book club or simply in the reader's mind.
Shelf Awareness
Discussion Questions
1. The title of the book, What Was Mine, gets at the themes of ownership and belonging. Discuss how that theme relates to the three main characters: Lucy, Marilyn, and Mia. What was theirs? What did they each lose throughout the story?
2. What is the effect of knowing from the beginning of the story that Lucy eventually gets caught?
3. In Lucy’s mind, aside from her one egregious act, she is a normal person—a good person, even. Is it possible for someone good and normal to stray so far from the path of what’s right and then simply return to it? Is it possible for a good person to do a bad thing, or are some acts so egregious as to define one as a bad person?
4. Marilyn’s character is portrayed as almost a different person before and after her daughter’s kidnapping. Discuss the ways in which she changes after going through this traumatic event.
5. "So much of who you are has to do with your mother." Do you agree with this statement?
6. Mia and Marilyn try to forgive Lucy for what she did, but others like Tom and even Lucy’s own sister, Cheryl, are not able to. Discuss the theme of forgiveness in the story. Why do you think two of the people most directly affected are the most willing to try to forgive? Have you ever been asked to forgive someone for something you thought was unforgivable?
7. Throughout the story, Lucy’s intentions don’t always line up with her actions. Even as she was kidnapping Mia, she was in denial about what she was doing, intending to give the baby back somehow. When she then almost lost Mia in a store, she "made promises to the universe" to set things right which she wouldn’t keep. She says she meant to tell Mia when she got older. "Part of me thought that if I waited long enough, if I used just the right words, perhaps she’d be able to understand." Do you think Lucy ever really intended to tell Mia the truth—or was she lying to herself about that, too?
8. After Mia discovers the truth about what happened to her, she has a hard time referring to either Lucy or Marilyn as "mother." Discuss what the word mother means to you. What makes a mother a mother? Is it the person who birthed you, whose genes you share, who raised you—and what if these don’t describe the same person? How do Mia’s feelings toward each of the women who think of themselves as her mother change over the next ten months?
9. When Lucy confesses her crime to Wendy, Wendy is kind and understanding, as she has a secret of her own to confess. Why do you think Wendy’s secret makes her sympathetic to Lucy? How do you think her secret compares with Lucy’s?
10. If the kidnapping hadn’t happened, Marilyn presumably would have chosen to remain employed and Mia would have been raised by a woman who, like Lucy, works outside the home. Compare and contrast the images presented in the book of different mothering styles and decisions that led to various choices. What do these differences in styles represent for Mia?
11. Marilyn and Tom both managed to eventually move on and make new lives for themselves after the kidnapping. Cheryl wonders how Lucy could ever "restore what she took from those parents[.] She took their baby. She took their marriage. She took the life they were meant to have." How do you think Marilyn and Tom would reconcile the regret of losing the life they were meant to have with embracing the seemingly happy lives they ended up with?
12. Does the fact that Lucy raised Mia with love excuse her actions? What does "restorative justice" mean in this case? How do you think she deserves to be punished for her crime?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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