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.From the Paperback edition.
