But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.Įxplores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood-and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town-and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.Įnter Mia Warren-an enigmatic artist and single mother-who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned-from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. , a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. It moved me to tears.” -Reese Witherspoon

It’s a deep psychological mystery about the power of motherhood, the intensity of teenage love, and the danger of perfection. “To say I love this book is an understatement. In a single, breathless sitting.” -Jodi Picoult Ng uses the complicated precedent set in the original case to delve deeper into themes of motherhood, ostracism, assimilation, and altruism.Now a Hulu original series starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington.

Mirabelle, or May Ling, just like Baby Jessica, is the object of tensions, debates, and moral grey areas, though as an infant she has no agency of her own. Ng reverses the outcome of the Baby Jessica case-Bebe Wong is denied custody of her daughter-but complicates the already difficult moral debate by ending the novel with Bebe’s retaliation against the McCullough family, and her triumph over them. The story featured in the national media, with articles in People and Newsweek detailing both the DeBoer’s fight to keep the child they’d come to love as their own and the joy the Schmidt family-Jessica’s birth parents-felt at welcoming her home after a long legal battle. In 1993, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Roberta DeBoer and her husband Jan were forced to return their adopted daughter Jessica, whom they had raised nearly from birth, to her adoptive parents in Iowa.

Ng little fires everywhere