The Surrogate

A powerful, fundamentalist Christian Texas family is painted villainous in this provocative but stringy book by Wall (The Girlfriends Club). Jamie Long, a 21-year-old college dropout left penniless following the death of the grandmother who raised her, falls into the clutches of Amanda Hartmann, a famous televangelist, and her politically connected five-foot-tall brother, Gus, when Jamie is hired as a surrogate mother for Amanda and her pretty boy husband, Toby Travis. Jamie signs a stiff contract promising utter secrecy, is successfully artificially inseminated and confined to the luxurious Hartmann Ranch located in the Texas Panhandle. But it doesn't take long for the naïve mother-to-be to discover the creepy truth about this ""incredibly wealthy family that practiced power and subterfuge along with religion."" Jamie escapes and delivers the baby on her own, with Gus not far behind, intent on tracking her down, killing her and delivering the newborn to his sister. With the help of long-time love Joe Brammer, Jamie scrambles to elude the family's grip and reach safety. Wall flirts with such hot-button issues as religious hypocrisy, incest and political warfare in this slow-building but edgy novel.