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Half moon lake / Kirsten Alexander.

By: Publication details: North Sydney, NSW : Penguin Random House, 2019.Description: x, 320 pages ; 24 cmISBN:
  • 9780143792062
Subject(s): Genre/Form: DDC classification:
  • A823.4 23
Summary: Inspired by the true story of a missing child who when eventually found was claimed by two mothers, Half Moon Lake is a captivating novel about the parent-child bond, identity, and what it really means to be part of a family. In 1913, on a summer's day at Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, four-year-old Sonny Davenport walks into the woods and never returns. The boy's mysterious disappearance from the family's lake house makes front-page news in their home town of Opelousas. John Henry and Mary Davenport are wealthy and influential, and will do anything to find their son. For two years, the Davenports search across the South, offer increasingly large rewards and struggle not to give in to despair. Then, at the moment when all hope seems lost, the boy is found in the company of a tramp. But is he truly Sonny Davenport? The circumstances of his discovery raise more questions than answers. And when Grace Mill, an unwed farm worker, travels from Alabama to lay claim to the child, newspapers, townsfolk, even the Davenports' own friends, take sides. As the tramp's kidnapping trial begins, and two desperate mothers fight for ownership of the boy, the people of Opelousas discover that truth is more complicated than they'd ever dreamed . . .
List(s) this item appears in: Australian Crime Fiction
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Status Date due Barcode Item reserves
Book Melbourne Athenaeum Library Fiction - Crime ALE Available 068829
Total reserves: 0

Includes reading group notes.

Inspired by the true story of a missing child who when eventually found was claimed by two mothers, Half Moon Lake is a captivating novel about the parent-child bond, identity, and what it really means to be part of a family. In 1913, on a summer's day at Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, four-year-old Sonny Davenport walks into the woods and never returns. The boy's mysterious disappearance from the family's lake house makes front-page news in their home town of Opelousas. John Henry and Mary Davenport are wealthy and influential, and will do anything to find their son. For two years, the Davenports search across the South, offer increasingly large rewards and struggle not to give in to despair. Then, at the moment when all hope seems lost, the boy is found in the company of a tramp. But is he truly Sonny Davenport? The circumstances of his discovery raise more questions than answers. And when Grace Mill, an unwed farm worker, travels from Alabama to lay claim to the child, newspapers, townsfolk, even the Davenports' own friends, take sides. As the tramp's kidnapping trial begins, and two desperate mothers fight for ownership of the boy, the people of Opelousas discover that truth is more complicated than they'd ever dreamed . . .

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