 Book Description
When their mother dies, teenagers Kate and Tyler Phillips find themselves alone. Their grief-stricken father, in denial, spends almost all of his time at his new girlfriend`s house, leaving his own kids to fend for themselves. When Kate becomes pregnant, the sisters enter a hermetic world of their own. They tell no one of Kate`s pregnancy and manage to prepare for the birth without anyone discovering Kate`s condition. They deliver the child, a girl named Deirdre, themselves, and care for her themselves. When the child`s existence is finally discovered, their makeshift family is threatened by the authorities, and their father, charged with abandonment, is finally forced to confront his own emotions.
Kate Phillips--17 years old, unmarried, and pregnant--and her younger sister Tyler have been abandoned by their parents. Cancer took their beloved mother two years before, and their father has emotionally left them, choosing to spend his time with his new girlfriend and her two young boys, returning to his home and daughters sporadically to leave money and assuage his guilty conscience. Tyler and Kate deliver Kate's baby girl all alone, in their quiet suburban house, their BMW silently parked in the garage. Kate insists that her baby's existence must remain hidden, but inevitably, the sisters' secrets are discovered, involving the police and children's protective services. Whether their father will retain custody of his two underage daughters, whether Kate will retain custody of her new baby daughter, and whether the father of Kate's child will remain out of jail are all questionable. Jessica Barksdale Inclán's novel has a plot, pulled from contemporary headlines, that gives readers a true and unsettling view of American society and the low value placed on its children. While all the characters in the tale attempt to justify their actions, the essential selfishness of the adults comes through with disturbing clarity. Everyone pays a high price, but none more so than Kate and Tyler, whose youth and innocence are lost through the actions of adults who should have protected them--who, instead, use and abandon them. Powerful and poignant, Her Daughter's Eyes is an impressive debut. --Lois Faye Dyer
In an upper middle-class neighborhood, on a street like Wildwood Drive, things like this are not supposed to happen.... Sixteen-year-old Kate is going to have a baby. She's done all to prepare for the new child's birth but one thing: She hasn't told anyone.
Except for her younger sister. Together, all they have is a crib made out of cardboard, sheets from the Goodwill...and hope. Hope that somehow, with the newborn baby in arms, everyone will forgive.
Praise for Her Daughter's Eyes:
Poignant, sharply introspective and thought provoking. Every parent of a teenager and indeed, every teenager should read this work with care. (New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank)
Beautifully written...Jessica Barksdale Incl‡n brings a profound understanding of human nature to her characters. I wish Ms. Incl‡n great success with this wonderful novel. (New York Times bestselling author Sally Mandel)
Jessica Barksdale Incl‡n is an author to watch. (New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah)
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