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Somebody's Baby: A Novel
 
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Somebody's Baby: A Novel [Hardcover]

Elaine Kagan (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)


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Book Description

April 22, 1998
In 1959, a gentile boy was off-limits to a young Jewish girl living in a well-to-do Kansas neighborhood. Especially a boy with tattoos, a drifter from California who had spent time in jail, who worked in a gas station, and who would fight a man for looking at him the wrong way. Jenny Jaffe knew the rules, but when she saw Will McDonald for the first time, everything she knew about right and wrong disappeared. What was left was a passionate, once-in-a-lifetime love that no social constraints could hold. Will and Jenny became inseparable, and by the end of Jenny's senior year in high school, she was pregnant. When they made a plan to run away, Jenny waited at the spot where Will was to pick her up, but he never showed.

What follows is the story of true love that spans three decades -- between man and woman, parent and child. Jenny is forced to give up her baby for adoption, and when that child, Claudia, becomes a parent herself, she begins a search for her biological parents at the risk of destroying the love of the adoptive parents who have raised her. Claudia finds more than she imagined, as she uncovers years of lies and betrayal, sacrifice and silence, and the extraordinary love of Will and Jenny, whose faith and passion survive it all.


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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The social and cultural worlds of Jewish girls growing up in the Midwest figure in Kagan's previous novels, The Girls and Blue Heaven. Here, passion undermines an upper-middle-class Jewish family in 1959 Kansas City. The scorching love affair between 16-year-old Jenny Jaffe and tattooed Will McDonald, recently released from San Quentin, begins when their eyes lock?through the windshield of her mother's powder-blue Oldsmobile at the Texaco station where Will pumps gas. The two fall in love, though Jenny's friend's are appalled that she's taken up with gentile "white trash." Jenny's parents, Esther and Mose, desperate to pry the pair apart, stoop to cruel measures. By the end of Jenny's senior year in high school, however, she is pregnant. She and Will plan to run away and marry, but when Will fails to appear at the appointed hour, Esther and Mose ship her off to the Stella Maris Home for Unwed Mothers in California, where Jenny is forced to give up her baby for adoption. What follows is a story of frustrated connections that spans several decades and links three generations, as Jenny and Will's daughter eventually searches for her identity. Kagan writes lively dialogue and thickens her narrative with a little melodrama and a weepy scene or two, but she has produced a touching and convincing tale that looks at different kinds of passion?sexual, religious, parental?and considers the irony that genuine love can be found in unexpected places. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates; film rights to United Artists. Author tour. (May) FYI: Kagan is an actress whose credits include Goodfellas, ER and Chicago Hope.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Jenny Jaffe, a middle-class Jewish teenager living in a fancy area of Kansas City in 1959, begins a relationship with a gentile guy named Will McDonald, a drifter from California replete with tattoos, prison time, and a job pumping gas. Will's good looks and charming manner make him irresistible, and he represents the forbidden world Jenny's parents have kept her from. When Jenny becomes pregnant, she and Will plan to elope. Their plan is foiled by her parents, who have Will picked up for violating his parole. (Welcome to a version of "Secrets and Lies.") Jenny is then sent to a Catholic Home for Girls in California to have her baby and give it up for adoption. Three decades pass and the plot thickens. The child, Claudia, is now grown and has her own child and decides to find her birth parents. All the characters involved engage in some heavy introspection, making this saga somewhat melodramatic. Still, this is a good choice for popular collections.?Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, MD
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: William Morrow (April 22, 1998)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0688157459
  • ISBN-13: 978-0688157456
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,975,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

32 Reviews
5 star:
 (15)
4 star:
 (11)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
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1 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (32 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars a story of reunion & love; a personal view of adoption, June 13, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Somebody's Baby: A Novel (Hardcover)
This is a book I couldn't put down. It is the story of Jenny Jaffe, a Jewish girl living in Kansas City, and how she meets and falls in love with a non-Jewish boy named William Cole MacDonald. Jenny and Will have many sexual encounters and he teaches her to open up and be assertive. Her relationship with will is openly frowned upon by her parents, and when she ends up pregnant with Will's baby, her parents send her away to a home for wayward girls in Los Angeles. She has the baby and is forced to put it up for adoption. The story continues by telling the story of Claudia, Jenny's baby, and how she searches for her birthparents. It recounts the years of her life and her struggle to find the answers to the many questions that adopted children have. This is a story of an everlasting love, of reunion, and of adoption...a firsthand look at how an adopted child struggles to find answers, and how adoptive parents struggle to hold on to "their baby". This story tells the truth: True love never dies.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars I cannot believe I have never heard of Kagan!, April 14, 2002
This review is from: Somebody's Baby: A Novel (Hardcover)
This is my first book by Elaine Kagan and I have my librarian to thank for that. She wrote her name down on my slip and said, try her. And I picked this one up in a hurry ~~ and it was one of the nicest books I've read in a long time.

As an expectant mother, I cannot imagine ever giving up my babies. I cannot imagine losing the love of my life ~~ nor have my parents take me away from him and make me give up our children. But as I was reading this book, the images still came to mind and Kagan's words are vivid enough to imagine the terror, the sorrows and the pain that Jenny must have gone through to give up her baby. Hers and Will ~~ the only man she has ever loved.

Then Claudia, the baby, begins a search to find an identity of herself ~~ she knew she was adopted ~~ her adoptive parents have never withheld the truth from her ~~ and she wanted to know where she got her looks from, her mannerisms ~~ to find the missing pieces of herself. And the search led to finding both of her biological parents. The search also opened up a new world for Claudia ~~ she was one of the lucky ones. All of her parents wanted her. She was the blessed one.

I really enjoyed this book ~~ I had to put it down a couple of times to avoid crying over parts of it. And Kagan is a good writer ~~ she writes with passion and vividness. She takes you into her story and you can't easily escape from it without thinking of the issues she's trying to make you think about. In this case, adoption is a little-known subject for me ~~ and it opened my eyes to all the sides of the issues. However, I wish she did explore a little more about Claudia's adoptive dad's feelings about Claudia meeting her biological father. Dads are just as important to a child's life as the mothers are.

This is a good read ~~ I highly recommend it. The story will enrapture you and you would want to know if Claudia's biological parents ever did find each other again.

4-14-02

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing story that hit a nerve, February 8, 2000
By 
This review is from: Somebody's Baby: A Novel (Hardcover)
This book was definetly a page turner. I finished it in one day. I couldnt put it down. I was reading it in the prosepctive of the daughter and I found it to be quite interesting when I gave it to my mother and to hear her presepective and it was so different. I would love to know how to write or e mail the author.
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