The Surrogate [Kindle Edition]

Judith Henry Wall (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A powerful, fundamentalist Christian Texas family is painted villainous in this provocative but stringy book by Wall (The Girlfriends Club). Jamie Long, a 21-year-old college dropout left penniless following the death of the grandmother who raised her, falls into the clutches of Amanda Hartmann, a famous televangelist, and her politically connected five-foot-tall brother, Gus, when Jamie is hired as a surrogate mother for Amanda and her pretty boy husband, Toby Travis. Jamie signs a stiff contract promising utter secrecy, is successfully artificially inseminated and confined to the luxurious Hartmann Ranch located in the Texas Panhandle. But it doesn't take long for the naïve mother-to-be to discover the creepy truth about this "incredibly wealthy family that practiced power and subterfuge along with religion." Jamie escapes and delivers the baby on her own, with Gus not far behind, intent on tracking her down, killing her and delivering the newborn to his sister. With the help of long-time love Joe Brammer, Jamie scrambles to elude the family's grip and reach safety. Wall flirts with such hot-button issues as religious hypocrisy, incest and political warfare in this slow-building but edgy novel.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The ad in the campus newspaper for a surrogate mother seems like the answer to all Jamie's prayers. Deeply in debt and with no family to support her, Jamie views the -pregnancy-for-hire contract as a way to pay her bills and finance her education while simultaneously helping a childless couple have a family. Only this isn't just any childless couple. Jamie is retained by none other than famed evangelist Amanda Hartmann, a woman who, along with her brother Gus, serves as political kingmaker within the country's religious conservative movement. Under the guise of privacy and security, Gus and Amanda insist that Jamie sever all ties with the outside world, incarcerating her at the family's remote Texas ranch for the duration of her pregnancy. But when Jamie uncovers dark family secrets, she escapes, only to have her child while trying to avoid leagues of Gus' hired assassins. Timely social commentary, nail-biting suspense, and a plaintive tale of an isolated young woman coalesce beautifully in Wall's riveting, fast-paced thriller. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 558 KB
• Print Length: 352 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0743258517
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Original edition (May 2, 2006)
• Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000GCFXZO
• Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #353,440 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very entertaining..., July 17, 2006

By 

Tracy L. (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Surrogate: A Novel (Paperback)

There were times when this book read like a script for Lifetime Television for Women movie. A couple of over-the-top characters and some far-fetched plot devices caused me to roll my eyes more than a few times.

Having said that I must admit, I was totally suckered into this story. There were times I couldn't put this book down. The author does a great job drawing the reader into the story. I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. Some readers will most likely not care for this, as the Christians in this book are not portrayed in a good light. However, it's still a very entertaining book, great for a summer beach read. Enjoy!

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars good but could have been much better..., March 7, 2007

By 

R. Stoeber (Belleville, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Surrogate: A Novel (Paperback)

I am writing this review moments after finishing this book. THE SURROGATE was a very interesting novel and kept me guessing throughout, which is the type of book I find very entertaining. The problems I had though are with the author's insistant use of profanity and sexual scenes. The profanity was way to graphic and completly useless. It seemed as though she through them in for shock value which did nothing to help the story. Especially the scene where the lawyer described sex with his wife. What did that accomplish in moving the story forward?! Absolutely positively NOTHING! Also, the sexual scenes between Jamie and Joe weren't needed either. The author successfully painted a picture of a couple very much in love but the sex scenes just made it sound tawdry and immature. "His [...] was amazing". Stupid wording. Let their love have meaning. Let it mean more and leave a lot more to the reader's imagination. We will thank you for it later.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars from the back cover:, January 20, 2010

By 

Minehava (PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Surrogate (Hardcover)

To a penniless twenty-year-old like Jamie Long, surrogate motherhood seemed both an act of altruism and a financial opportunity. But once pregnant and under contract to Amanda Hartmann, the head of a famous evangelical family, Jamie realizes that she's getting more than she bargained for. Whisked away to the vast, isolated family ranch, she's closely supervised and carefully cut off from the outside world. She learns the family's dark secrets -- and sees the enormity of their ruthlessness. When Jamie hears Amanda's plan to claim the baby as her natural-born child, she begins to suspect that her own life is in danger and resolves to flee.
Alone with a tiny newborn, she calls on the one man in the world she can trust -- her high school crush, Joe Brammer. Their love unites them in a struggle to escape, and soon enough their flight becomes a fight for their lives.

Brilliantly weaving some of today's most controversial social issues into a captivating page-turner, The Surrogate is Judith Henry Wall's greatest triumph to date.