The Cuckoo's Child

A few minutes' distraction at a rugby game and Livvy Alvarsson's life is shattered. Her four-year-old son, Daniel, disappears. After the initial frenzy of the police investigation and a fruitless search, Livvy and her husband, Neil, each try to cope with their loss in their own way, but their marriage becomes strained and Livvy falls into a profound depression. When her beloved brother is diagnosed with Leukemia eleven years later, Livvy volunteers to be his bone marrow donor. But she soon discovers that not only is she not a match with Stephen, but she cannot possibly be related to the family she grew up with. Armed with a few clues from wartime England, she embarks on a search for her birth family, leaving her small town in British Columbia and travelling to the UK. There, she visits a family estate in the countryside, where remnants of her birth family still live: a lonely, eccentric cousin; an initially wary but informative uncle; and a terrifyingly hostile grandmother. In the process, Livvy finally learns her real mother's sad story and her elusive father's dark role in it. News of Daniel's sudden return sends Livvy back home, to the joys and complications of regaining a lost child, who is now a sixteen-year-old stranger. Life is not perfect here, either, for Stephen is dying, but Livvy faces the future reinforced by her connection to both her families and by her own unique experience as a child who was lost and found again. In a story about loss and grief, secrets and guilt, there comes a sense of restoration and balance. As Livvy confides her story to her dying brother, she reveals not only an identity enriched by experience, but also the transcendent importance of family and love.