Secrecy

Something terrible happened to Charlotte Dawes when she was 14, something that's become the center of a tangled mass of family secrets that threatens to destroy every member of the Dawes family. No one -- not her father, the well-respected Bill Dawes, or her absent mother Elena, or her uncle Cliff -- knows how to help Charlotte face what her new cousin Ted did to her. Only Claudia, Ted's mother, who must face her own agony at having raised this monster, can reach Charlotte, befriending her, serving as a sort of surrogate mother. For the Dawes family, what happened to Charlotte was the beginning of the end. Once factory owners and major employers in this New England mill town, the family has been plunged into debt and disgrace. The mill site has been leased to unscrupulous businessmen who are carelessly destroying the environment. And worse: Ted, accused of attacking two other girls, jumped bail and vanished. Charlotte is now in her mid-20s, an architect with a promising future. She's bright, beautiful -- and endlessly alone. A brief trip to her hometown provides her with a flash of inspiration, an urban renewal project designed to restore the mill site and return her family's respect within the town. She and Roger, the young construction executive whom she befriends in Boston, who takes an enormous interest in the project, begin to make it reality. But after months of preparation, the plans suddenly grind to a halt -- and when Charlotte finally discovers who is at the center of the problem, old secrets rise to the surface again, demanding to be untangled. It's a terrifying process, but one that might open the way for Charlotte to truly let someone into her life. Combining Belva Plain's signature storytelling with an electrifying narrative that sweeps the reader along to its startling conclusion, Secrecy tells a tale of injustice, of wild hearts and stubborn minds and of a young woman's struggle to make sense of her family.