The Nearness of You

March 6, 2017
A successful Houston couple uses a surrogate to have a baby, with unintended consequences, in Ward’s (The Same Sky) absorbing study of parenting and what makes a family. Successful heart surgeon Suzette Kendall adores her job, which leaves no room for children. Even if there were, her family’s history of mental illness has convinced her not to risk passing her genes to a child. When her husband, Hyland, desperate for a child, suggests using a surrogate to conceive, she’s hesitant but reluctantly agrees. They take a chance on a first-time surrogate, 21-year-old Dorrie Muscarello, but when pregnant Dorrie disappears, they’re shocked. Two years later, Dorrie’s mother comes to their door with a little girl in tow, changing their lives in an instant. The story is told through the alternating perspectives of Hyland, Suzette, Dorrie, and their troubled, now 16-year-old daughter, Eloise. Ward deftly explores the heartache and tenderness of parenthood, especially motherhood, in all its wonderful, intense, and messy forms. Short chapters make for a brisk pace, and though a few twists seem shoehorned in, this story of love and hope is, ultimately, an uplifting one.

November 15, 2016
A young surrogate mother changes her mind and goes AWOL.Suzette and Hyland Kendall, she a workaholic heart surgeon, he an unhappy architect, agreed early on not to have children. As the child of a severely mentally ill mother--her early memories include being rescued by a firefighter from a burning house while in an advanced state of malnutrition--Suzette will take no chances with her genes. But Hyland, who lost his parents and sister in a car accident when he was 11, has never given up his secret desire to see their faces in another generation. And now that surrogacy has become a convenient option, he is able to bring Suzette around to his side. Dorrie, the 21-year-old they meet through the Fertility Clinic of Houston, is planning to use her $35,000 fee to escape her job feeding penguins at Sea-O-Rama and fulfill her dream of going to college. Once pregnant, she realizes pretty quickly that she'll never be able to give up her baby and hits the road before they even get the first sonogram. She hides out in a seedy motel in New Orleans, then helps a young girl ditch her junkie prostitute mom and return to the house FEMA kicked them out of. Here, amid the standing water and the mildew, the two camp out until the baby's birth, which they manage themselves with a few books spread out on the floor. Twists, turns, and a big jump in time get us back to the setup in the prologue: a teenager lies in a hospital room on the brink of death. Two women and a man stand by her bed. "Which of you is her mother?" asks the nurse, but nobody seems to be able to answer the question. Looks like literary fiction, smells like literary fiction, tastes like literary fiction--but sensational developments, tabloid situations, and clairvoyant dreams take Ward's (This Same Sky, 2015, etc.) topical plot into telenovela territory.

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December 15, 2016
Suzette and Hyland Kendall have had a happily childless marriage, until Hyland changes his mind. Suzette refuses to risk passing her mother's severe mental illness on to a baby, so they decide to use a surrogate. They choose young Dorrie, who wants the money to go to college and escape her dead-end life in a tourist-trap town. But Dorrie falls in love with baby Eloise and gives up everything to try to keep her. The plot jumps ahead 16 years to Eloise ditching her class on a field trip to New York to find her institutionalized grandmother, looking for clues to her birth mother. Instead, she finds a kind-hearted drug dealer with a car. As Suzette and Hyland race from Houston to Hyannis, more surprises await them than their troubled daughter. The relentless emotional twists are broken up by descriptions of Suzette's work as a cardiac surgeon (technical, not graphic). Suggest this to readers who like stories about competent people facing tough choices, like those from Jodi Picoult or Julie Lawson Timmer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)