Keeping Lucy

by T. Greenwood

Overview

"This story will have readers not only rooting for Ginny and Lucy, but thinking about them long after the last page is turned." -- Lisa Wingate, New York Times Bestselling Author of Before We Were Yours
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The heartbreaking and uplifting story, inspired by incredible true events, of how far one mother must go to protect her daughter.

Dover, Massachusetts, 1969. Ginny Richardson's heart was torn open when her baby girl, Lucy, born with Down Syndrome, was taken from her. Under pressure from his powerful family, her husband, Ab, sent Lucy away to Willowridge, a special school for the “feeble-minded." Ab tried to convince Ginny it was for the best. That they should grieve for their daughter as though she were dead. That they should try to move on.

But two years later, when Ginny's best friend, Marsha, shows her a series of articles exposing Willowridge as a hell-on-earth--its squalid hallways filled with neglected children--she knows she can't leave her daughter there. With Ginny's six-year-old son in tow, Ginny and Marsha drive to the school to see Lucy for themselves. What they find sets their course on a heart-racing journey across state lines—turning Ginny into a fugitive.

For the first time, Ginny must test her own strength and face the world head-on as she fights Ab and his domineering father for the right to keep Lucy. Racing from Massachusetts to the beaches of Atlantic City, through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to a roadside mermaid show in Florida, Keeping Lucy is a searing portrait of just how far a mother’s love can take her.

"A heartrending yet inspiring novel that kept me reading late into the night.” —Kristina McMorris, New York Times bestselling author of Sold on a Monday and The Edge of Lost

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250164247
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/06/2019
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	11,329
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

T. GREENWOOD's novels have sold over 250,000 copies. She has received grants from the Sherwood Anderson Foundation, Christopher Isherwood Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Maryland State Arts Council. Her novel Bodies of Water was a 2013 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist; Two Rivers and Grace were each named Best General Fiction Book at the San Diego Book Awards, and Where I Lost Her was a Globe and Mail bestseller in 2016. Greenwood lives with her family in San Diego.
T. GREENWOOD's novels have sold over 300,000 copies. She has received grants from the Sherwood Anderson Foundation, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Maryland State Arts Council. Her novel Bodies of Water was a 2014 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist, and she is the recipient of four San Diego Book Awards. Keeping Lucy was a 2020 Target Book Club pick. Greenwood lives with her family in San Diego and Vermont.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Keeping Lucy

"A baby born less than perfect in the world's eyes, a mother persuaded that giving up her child is for the best, a lingering bond that pulls and tugs yet will not break. Keeping Lucy follows a mother willing to give up everything to save the child she's been told she must forget. This story will have readers not only rooting for Ginny and Lucy, but thinking about them long after the last page is turned." — Lisa Wingate, New York Times Bestselling Author of Before We Were Yours

“In T. Greenwood’s latest page-turner, a betrayed mother discovers just how much she is willing to sacrifice for the safety of her child, deemed unwanted by even those most trusted. Keeping Lucy is a wholly absorbing tale in which the bonds of marriage, friendship, and family are pushed to the ultimate limit. A heartrending yet inspiring novel that kept me reading late into the night.” —Kristina McMorris, New York Times bestselling author of Sold on a Monday and The Edge of Lost

“With Keeping Lucy, Greenwood once again mines emotional depths that have become the hallmark of her writing. In fighting for the right to raise her daughter with Down Syndrome, a mother in the late 1960s harnesses the courage and confidence she didn’t know she’d possessed. Readers can’t help but be drawn into her heartbreaking and uplifting journey.” —Mandy Mikulencak, author of Forgiveness Road and The Last Suppers

"How much would you be willing to sacrifice for a child you didn’t know? This is the question posed in T. Greenwood’s Keeping Lucy, the story of a young mother betrayed by those who claim to know best—including her husband—and the harrowing journey she must take to find her voice and take a stand—even if taking a stand means losing everything. Compassionate, clear-eyed, and often wrenching, Keeping Lucy is the kind of story that’s meant to be read with the heart, and one that will resonate long after the reading is done." – Barbara Davis, Bestselling author of When Never Comes

"Greenwood’s (Rust & Stardust, 2018) heart-wrenching, emotional roller coaster of a read also seamlessly captures the transformation of women’s roles in the early 1970s. A heartfelt tale of true friendship, a mother’s unstoppable love, and the immeasurable fortitude of women." - Booklist

"...An unabashed heart-tugger...a moving depiction of the primal power of a mother’s love." - Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2019-05-13
Greenwood's earlier novels of family dysfunction (Rust and Stardust, 2018, etc.) have hooked onto issues ranging from anorexia to child abduction; here Down syndrome disrupts a young woman's life and marriage.

In 1963, 22-year-olds Ginny and Ab, drawn together by their oh-so-sensitive appreciation of poetry, fall in love despite class differences—he's a student at Amherst College; she's a working-class "local girl." By 1969, stay-at-home mom Ginny is caring for their 4-year-old son, Peyton, in a wealthy suburb while Ab, who never wanted to be a lawyer, is toiling away in his father's high-powered Boston firm. After the premature birth of their second child, Ginny holds her daughter, Lucy, only briefly before the doctor whisks the infant away, explaining she is "mongoloid" and unlikely to survive long. Once her tranquilizers wear off, Ginny learns Ab has followed his rigidly autocratic father's dictate and removed Lucy to a state-run facility called Willowridge, coincidentally located just outside Amherst. Though distraught, she accepts Ab's decision. What is most problematic in the novel is not Down syndrome as an issue but Ginny as a character. Her passive dependence (not even learning to drive), "willful ignorance" in accepting whatever conditions her husband's family demands, and further "willful ignorance" of current events like Vietnam and feminism make her seem anachronistic. In 1971, when Ginny learns that Willowridge, where she's never visited although her mother lives nearby, is under investigation for mistreating children, she finally goes to see Lucy. What begins as a legally permitted off-campus weekend stay spirals out of control into technical kidnapping when Ginny decides she cannot take fragile but increasingly alert Lucy back, Ab and his family be damned. Poor Ab is portrayed as a spineless wonder even when he succumbs to Ginny's miraculous new strength of will.

A serious subject cheapened by melodrama that rings inauthentic.

Kirkus Reviews