Run - by Ann Patchet

This is a book about family and about politics and about parents who want you to be everything they weren't. It is about family in so many forms.

Bernadette Doyle wanted children, she wanted many children, so after only being able to have one son she and her husband Bernard decide to adopt. They are happy to adopt one black son but even happier when they hear that the mother does not want her sons separated and offers them her other son, who is 18 months old. Little did they realize that just a few short years later Bernadette would die.

The boys grow up, the real son seems to be a disappointment to his father who goes on to be the Mayor of Boston. But, the younger boys are nothing but joys in many ways, but still disappointing because they are not going into something like medicine or politics.

The story transpires over a 24 hour period of time. After attending a special engagement where they hear Jesse Jackson speak, one of the boys is pushed out of the way of a moving vehicle. He suffers only a broken ankle but the woman who pushes him out of the way is badly injured. Her 11 year old daughter is left standing alone as no one is there to claim her, so Bernard and his boys take her home with them. It is then that she informs them that she knows them much better than they know her. She's been watching them her whole life. This is a book of secrets revealed. Of how a Mother's love never dies whether it's the love for a son she gave birth to or a child that she has taken as her own.

While the book starts out slow and I honestly almost gave up before I was a few chapters in but I'm glad I kept going. It takes a bit to pick up but it did and it was worth it. In the end I finished it in two nights, so it reads pretty quickly. The book promises twists and turns but honestly it's predictable. The few twists you don't see coming are so far out of left field that they don't even really matter in the scheme of things. I like books that really make me think and all I really think about this one is that a month from now I won't even remember having read it.