April 15, 2006
In this sequel to the popular novel " The Shirt off His Back" (2000), Terry Winston is married to Jackie and has been raising his teenage twin daughters, Ariana and Alisa. When the girls' birth mother, Catherine, resurfaces with more selfish motives, the harmony of the whole Winston clan is shaken. Catherine has become a very wealthy woman acquiring international companies with blackmail and dirty tactics. Now that she wants to enact a cost-saving measure that will multiply everyone's wealth, her means to the end are unpleasant for her underlings. However, Catherine is facing a health issue that all of her money cannot fix. She disrupts the girls' prom night to ask one of them to donate a kidney. The girls are torn; Ariana wants desperately to help her mother, but she is not a healthy donor. Alisa is adamant against donating but succumbs to her sister's pleas. The transplant is successful, yet Catherine's tortured employees turn over incriminating evidence about her unscrupulous business dealings to the FBI. This engaging story's moral is, what comes around, goes around. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)