COVENANT CHILD

In a contemporary spin on the concept of biblical "covenant" that also functions as a parable of accepting and rejecting faith, Blackstock offers a smooth though somewhat improbable tale of one woman's promise to her husband to care for her stepchildren. Kara Holbrooke and her twin sister, Lizzie, lived a middle-class existence with their doting father, Jack, who nixed a life of moneyed pleasure despite his father's wealth. Shortly after their birth, the twins' mother, Sherry, died in a car accident. When the girls were three, Jack married Amanda, but six months after the wedding, he and his parents were killed in a plane crash. The twins are easy prey—maybe too easy—for Sherry's redneck parents, Eloise and Deke Krebbs, who smell money and go to court to claim the girls as their own. Amanda is the beneficiary of her in-laws' billion-dollar-plus estate, but she loses custody of the twins. Bound by her promise to Jack, she manages the estate with an eye to returning it to the girls. But brought up in the ghastly home environment of the Krebbs, the twins grow into hard-drinking, shoplifting, promiscuous teenagers who are taught to hate Amanda. At age 18, the girls must decide if they will accept or reject an offer from Amanda that could change the course of their lives. Blackstock's characters are fairly one-dimensional, and it's a rather far-fetched plot, but her writing is engaging. Inspirational fiction fans will likely suspend their disbelief and enjoy the story. (May)