Running Scared-Lisa Jackson

Running Scared
Lisa Jackson
Zebra, Aug 1 2010, $7.99
ISBN: 9781420101829

In 1980 Kate Summers still grieves the deaths of her husband and daughter due to a drunken driver. When she is given a chance to adopt an infant, she does not have to think about her decision; Kate instantly agrees even with the stipulations that she must ask no questions, leave Boston immediately and tell everyone she birthed the child.

For the next fifteen years, Kate raises her beloved child in Hopewell, Oregon although she always looks over her shoulder in fear that someone will know the child she loves is not hers and the adoption was probably criminal. The moment of truth that always frightened her arrives when Deagan O'Roarke, an illegitimate offspring of a Boston Brahman, arrives from New England and becomes a friend of the single mom and her teenage son. He begins to fall in love with both and eventually admits Jon is his son. He insists he was drunk when his cousin Bibi Sullivan seduced him. Bibi's father Robert detesting his pathetic family seeks his grandson while the rest of the brood knows what his finding the teen means to their gold spoon lifestyle.

This is an exhilarating rewriting of the author’s tale Wishes with the new version emphasizing the suspense while the original the romance. Kate is terrific as she behaves like the Running Scared man in Roy Orbison’s song of the same title as she always expected someone to claim Jon as theirs. When he and the extended Sullivan family converge on the Pacific Northwest, Kate knows her nightmare has come true but it is even worse than her frightening dreams as she never expected her son to be in danger. Lisa Jackson converts her tale into a taut thriller.

Harriet Klausner