The Fourth Child

Book smart, devoutly Catholic, and painfully unsure of herself, Jane becomes pregnant in high school; by her early twenties, she is in an uneasy marriage and raising three children in the suburbs. In the fall of 1991, as her children are growing older and more independent, Jane joins a local antiabortion group and, following the tenets of her beliefs, adopts a little girl from Eastern Europe. But Mirela is a difficult, sometimes destructive child who remains stubbornly unattached, no matter how much love Jane shows her. As Jane becomes consumed with helping Mirela, her relationships with her family, especially her oldest daughter, Lauren, begin to fray.

Felling estranged from her mother and just starting high school, Lauren tentatively begins to reinvent herself and discovers the power of her burgeoning creativity and sexuality - a journey that both echoes and departs from her mother's own adolescent experiences. But when Lauren is confronted with the limits of her independence, Jane is thrown into crisis, forced to reconcile her principles and faith with her determination to keep her daughters safe.