Family Secrets - Hardcover

Grade 5-8-- When 13-year-old Tracy moves with her family to the small town in Massachusetts where her father grew up, she learns that she is actually the child of a schoolmate of her father's. As she struggles to find herself in a new town, with new friends, and with a new understanding of her place in her family, she meets David, an older boy who carries an even heavier burden. His parents and sister drowned in a boating accident and he is grieving while trying to care for his mentally disturbed uncle, who may be responsible for local arsons. The book is brief, suspenseful (David's uncle seems to be particularly violent towards Tracy and may be stalking her), sentimental, and includes some quirky characters. The story wraps up neatly when a fire at David's house frees him from his uncle, and Tracy is given a tape made by her mother just before her death that reconciles the girl to her adopted family and her mother's decision to give her away. Philippa Pearce's The Way to Sattin Shore (Puffin, 1983) and Nina Bawden's The Outside Child (Lothrop, 1989) handle the emotion and suspense of this kind of situation in a stronger manner, but Corcoran's book will appeal to readers who like a mildly suspenseful family story and a satisfying, if unrealistic, conclusion. --Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, Laramie
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The ``secret'' comes out only a few pages into this story when Tracy, second daughter of the Stewart family, learns she that was adopted as a baby, a truth now revealed because her birth mother has died. The title's ``family'' refers not only to Tracy's ongoing reassessment of the word's meaning as she meets the people related to her birth mother, but to the Stewarts' move from Cambridge to Tracy's father's hometown on Massachusetts' North Shore. While still adjusting to her new knowledge, Tracy meets David, whose entire family was tragically killed the year before, and also other residents who look out for each other in small-town style. Tracy's ideas and definitions evolve right to the book's last line: ``...even if your real family isn't there, friends can be a kind of family too.'' Unfortunately, that sentence rings as hollow as others found in various crucial scenes, infusing the story with trivializing sentiment rather than with genuine reflection on familial love. (Fiction. 10+) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.