Daybreak [Mass Market Paperback]

Belva Plain (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1995

The doctor's office is cool, white, sterile. But the doctor's words are searing: blood tests prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Margaret and Arthur Crawfield's beloved, dying son is not their child. Now they must face Peter's death and the shock of having a son they have never met. Grieving, yet compelled, they begin a search that will tear two families apart.

Laura and "Bud" Rice share an elegant home and two children, brilliant, handsome Tom, and cherished, chronically ill eleven-year-old Timmy. But after nineteen years of marriage, Laura's respectable husband is a stranger—and the reason for Tom's escalating involvement with a group of campus bigots. Suddenly the Crawfields enter their lives and shatter their fragile world. As the Rices' quiet Southern town explodes with hate and violence, the two familes must embrace—or be destroyed by—the shattering truth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A Southern couple struggles with the impending death of their son.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

To be charitable, you don't really think about how weak everything in this book is until you've finished zipping through it at about 150 mph. It is then, when you sit back to ponder its you'd-better-not-be-anti-Semitic-because-you-might-be-Jewish-too message and your mind flashes back to the countless TV movies that treated with equal sensitivity and superficiality the burning issues of our day (rape, child-parent relationships, fatal diseases, prejudice, etc.), that you begin to wonder what the superficial aspect of this formula means. Does it mean, for instance, that the issue is being exploited for some other purpose? Does it mean that we, the readers or TV viewers, handle these issues better when we're not called on to actually think? Anyway, something like that seems to be going on in this story of Tom, the nice young man who grows up to be a bigot like his dad and even becomes, through his girlfriend, an ardent follower of a David Duke-style politician. What he doesn't know--at first--is that he was swapped at birth with a boy who dies of cystic fibrosis (on about page two of the novel) and that he is really Jewish. Fortunately, we know he's soft-hearted like his piano-teaching mother because he's so kind to his younger "brother," who also has cystic fibrosis. Tom's reaction to discovering the truth is self-hatred and denial until his girlfriend, a true anti-Semite, finds out, and then Tom becomes sensitive again. Tom's nazi father is, by the way, the cause of all this cystic fibrosis (irony of ironies), and is, of course, Southern. Tom's real, Jewish parents are intellectual and rich, his dreamy, piano-playing "mother" is destined to find a man as kindhearted as she. La, la, la; very predictable, pretty dumb. Stuart Whitwell --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Dell; 1St Edition edition (March 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440216818
• ISBN-13: 978-0440216810
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 1.2 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #634,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BIGOTRY FIGURES IN THE NATURE v. NURTURE CONTROVERSY, January 5, 2001

By 

BeatleBangs1964 (United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Daybreak (Mass Market Paperback)

Margaret and Arthur Crawfield are devastated to learn from a doctor that their terminally ill son, Peter is not really their child. Blood tests have proven that Peter cannot possibly be related to the Crawfords. Since Peter was born in a small clinic, they set upon a quest to find the one other baby boy who was born at the clinic the day Peter was born.

Their search leads them to Laura and Bud Rice, an affluent couple with two sons. The younger son, Tim is chronically ill like Peter. Tom, the older of the two is involved in a clandestine chapter of the KKK with Bud. Tom's girlfriend, Robbie is an ardent Nazi and believes "Mein Kampf" to be gospel instead of hateful propaganda. She and Tom share bigotry and she declares that she "went political" at an early age; being "political" is her euphemism for espousing bigotry and hate.

The two families meet, Tom's confusion reaches a head...the Crawfields are Jewish! Tom has to accept his natural heritage and yet, he isn't sure about the bigotry that Bud taught him. This story emphasizes the nature v. nurture controversy. Bigotry is not a congenital condition. It is a learned condition. As for Tom, which side does he choose? His natural Jewish heritage or the learned bigotry? And Robbie? Where does she fit into this? The plot does thicken and the story is compelling.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A GREAT BOOK! ..., July 8, 2002

By 

J. Kirkman "book jen" (St. Petersburg, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Daybreak (School & Library Binding)

I personally like Belva Plain's writing a lot, ...The story was very touching, and Belva Plain expressed the emotions very well of waht others would do in that situation finding out that one of your children isn't your 'biological' child after all. She wrote with feeling through the whole book, and the ending was very well done with all the characters. An excellent read if you ask me!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable Reading, February 7, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Daybreak (Mass Market Paperback)

Belva Plain came through once again. A very touching and emotional story about two boys switched at birth. The story was well written with lots of twists and turns. Definitely a page turner.