Isabel's Daughter: A Novel - Hardcover

Hendricks, Judith R

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060503467 ISBN 13: 9780060503468

Publisher: William Morrow, 2003

Synopsis

From the author of Bread Alone comes an intimate tale of a woman -- given up at birth -- piecing together her mother's identity

After a childhood spent in an institution and a series of foster homes, Avery James has trained herself not to wonder about the mother who gave her up. But her safe, predictable life changes one night at a party in the home of a wealthy Santa Fe art dealer when she stumbles upon the portrait of a woman who is the mirror image of herself.

Avery has found her mother, Isabel Colinas, an artist who died eight years earlier in a tragic accident. Slowly but inevitably, she is compelled to discover all she can about the woman. Searching for Isabel -- in her work, in the stories of friends, rivals, and lovers, in Isabel's own journal, and in what's left of Querencia, the old miner's cabin that was her haven -- Avery is drawn into complex relationships with the people who knew her mother. And the unexpected reappearance of Will Cameron, the boy Avery loved in high school, further complicates matters. As she draws together the threads of her mother's artistic heritage, her grandmother's skills as a curandera, or healer, and her own talent for cooking, Avery learns that, while discovering Isabel provides a certain resolution in her life, it's discovering herself that brings lasting happiness.

Beautifully observed and insightful, with Isabel's Daughter Judith Ryan Hendricks delivers a moving portrait of familial love -- a bond that transcends time and place.

About this title

About the Author

A former journalist, copywriter, computer instructor, travel agent, waitress, and baker, Judith Ryan Hendricks is the author of three previous novels, including the bestseller Bread Alone. She and her husband live in New Mexico.

Reviews

Adult/High School-Avery James, left at an orphanage as a newborn, cannot forget that her mother abandoned her. Angry at the world, she runs away at 13 and attends high school in a nearby New Mexico town with the help of Cassie, an old woman who is herbalist, healer, and friend. The teen falls in love with Will Cameron, a wealthy classmate who proposes marriage. But Cassie dies suddenly, and Avery fears discovery of her past. After graduation, she flees again, to Albuquerque. Working as a waitress, she makes friends with Rita, and they move to Santa Fe, where a small catering firm hires her. While working at the home of Paul DeGraf, an art dealer, she sees a portrait of a woman who could be her double: it is her mother. A well-known fiber artist engaged to DeGraf, she drowned mysteriously in the pool at his home. When Rita leaves, Avery, now jobless, moves into DeGraf's guest house. She meets Will again, and their future together is presaged, but Isabel's death remains a mystery. Teens will identify with Avery, who has all the emotion and sass of a girl becoming a woman, plus an indomitable will. While the story is somewhat fantastic, the characters, especially the protagonist, are well drawn and the dialogue is true to life.
Molly Connally, Chantilly Regional Library, VA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A foundling's search for her mother is the subject of this heartfelt if predictable second novel by Hendricks (Bread Alone). Revealed in flashbacks, Avery James's odyssey takes place in the Southwest, where she grew up in the county orphan's home. She is shunned by her more privileged peers through most of her school years, until popular Will Cameron breaks through her determinedly antisocial armor, and she has her first bittersweet experience of love. Avery leaves the home for the rural haven provided by an eccentric old woman called Cassie, a curandera, or healer, who teaches Avery how to concoct remedies from wild plants. As she grows older, Avery's curiosity about the mother who abandoned her becomes increasingly obsessive. Eventually, she finds her way to Santa Fe and its famed art colonies, and goes to work for a trendy caterer (she had providentially learned to cook in the orphans' home). At the house of a client, she sees a portrait of a woman to whom she bears a striking resemblance. Avery's eyes, one brown, one amber, have always been her distinguishing feature, and they're exactly like those of the woman in the portrait, painted by renowned, brilliant artist Tom Hemmings. The client and owner of the painting, millionaire gallery owner Paul DeGraf, takes a liking to Avery and becomes pivotal to her search for her roots. The climax involves a heady dose of feel-good melodrama, but Avery's no-nonsense toughness keeps the saccharine at bay.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

At the core of this novel pulses a relationship between two people who never knew each other--Avery James and the mother who abandoned her when she was an infant. Its beat, muffled for years as Avery scraps her way up through childhood as an orphan, grows louder when she stumbles accidentally into a circle of people who knew her now-long-dead mother. Hendricks covers well-trod ground--a child's quest to understand an absent parent turns into an exercise in self-discovery. But Hendricks writes so convincingly and with such appealing characters that nothing about the book feels tired. She calls to mind Barbara Kingsolver in her affinity for wise women and the power of close female friendships. The novel gets texture from the contrast between the self-preserving toughness Avery affects and the extraordinary warmth she encounters in a few key people. Readers of this fine novel won't want to tune out any part of Avery's life. Karen Holt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060503467
• ISBN 13: 9780060503468
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400