What was Mine

What was Mine
by Helen Klein Ross

This novel is told from multiple perspectives and you read how a kidnapping of a child effects multiple people, the birth mother, the child, the kidnapper, the sister of the kidnapper and more.

Lucy keeps it hidden for two decades that the child everyone thinks she adopted, was actually kidnapped.  Lucy desperately wanted a child but she was unable to conceive with her husband.  They try IVF, but that doesn't work for them.  And IVF is expensive and they can only afford to try for so long.  

One day she see a baby at IKEA with no-one around.  She goes from taking the baby to the front of the store so they can call the mother, to outside to "get fresh air" and she soon has the baby in her car and she is driving away.  It was sad how after she kidnaps the baby she already has all this baby stuff to take care of a baby as she had hoped for a baby for so long and had a room ready for years.

The birth mother is devastated and never stops hoping to see her child again.  She feels guilty for turning away from her child while talking on the phone.  

Through an odd sort of events the birth mother and Mia are reconnected.  Mia is devastated to learn the truth.  Lucy ends up fleeing to China to avoid persecution.

What I liked about this novel was the multiple perspectives.  You read about the heartbreak Lucy goes through wanting a child to her heartbreak as she is in China away from her daughter.  You read about the heartbreak of the birth mother wondering about her child all these years.  And you read about the heartbreak of Mia discovering that who she thought was her mother really isn't.

I did feel like the ending was incomplete.  Lucy should be in jail, not in China hiding out.  She kidnapped a child.  She could have legally adopted a child instead of stealing someone else's baby.  This novel did a nice job of giving Lucy's perspective of why she did what she did, but she she still deserves to go to jail.