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Pretty Baby

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Pretty Baby

August 2015

I discovered Mary Kubica last year with her debut novel, THE GOOD GIRL, so when PRETTY BABY came my way, I was one eager reader. Now I am known as the kind of person who is not fun to watch television or go to the movies with. I am prone to saying, “I figured it out,” which makes my husband and sons crazy. Well, Kubica completely “got me” as I did not see where this story was heading.

Let me back up here. For the last few weeks on the corner by our office, there have been a number of homeless men who sit with a sign asking for money. What is interesting is that there are different men there each day, and they each have the same sign. I walk by and think that somewhere there is a camera here, and this is a social experiment to see how we are reacting. Keep this in mind as I tell you the opener of PRETTY BABY.

There is a young woman with a baby at a train station who is clearly homeless. Now what was going to happen here? Heidi Wood is a wife, a mother, a social activist and a bit of a bleeding heart. She sees the young lady once, then twice, and then at various places around town. Intrigued and with a warm heart, she reaches out to try to help the same way she would do with her immigration clients at the nonprofit she works for. She is rebuffed time and again, but she persists.

Learning that the woman’s name is Willow and the baby is Ruby, Heidi tries to draw Willow in with the promise of a warm meal at a local restaurant. With nary a thought for her husband, Chris, and her daughter, a teen named Zoe, Heidi takes on the cause of Willow and Ruby. She longs to nurture as she no longer can have children of her own. In a brazen act, she brings Willow and the baby home to her swanky apartment, which appalls her husband and daughter. It also shocked this reader. She opens her home while Chris looks on in utter fear and Zoe rages.

Bits of Willow’s past emerge, and we see just how shabbily life has treated her. But the whole story is not there. Something is missing. Something is not right. There are marks on Willow and Ruby that are not explained.

The book is told from various points of view, and at times it is downright terrifying. Think of turning your world upside down by inviting the wrong person in and then spin it around a few more times. I am not going to share more except to say that Kubica is definitely one to keep an eye on. And be sure to read PRETTY BABY with the lights on.

Pretty Baby
by Mary Kubica