A Matter of Chance

Maloney, founder of Women Reading Aloud, an organization that promotes women writers, sensitively examines grief, guilt, and a mother’s love in her well-crafted first novel. New York single mother Maddie Stewart, an editor at Hot Style magazine, has a job she enjoys, good friends, and a lovely and intelligent eight-year-old daughter, Vinni. One sunny morning during a summer holiday at the Jersey shore, Maddie and Vinni spot an older couple, Rudy and Hilda, strolling hand in hand on the beach. Suddenly, Rudy collapses. Maddie leaves Vinni with Hilda and rushes back to her cottage to phone for an ambulance. When she returns, Hilda and Vinni are gone and Rudy is dead. Although Maloney throws in conventional mystery elements, including the handsome police detective, villainous threats, and repeated admonishments to leave the investigation to professionals, she focuses on Maddie’s discovery of herself through her struggle to find her daughter. The book’s epigraph by Isadora Duncan succinctly sums up its theme: “With what price we pay for the glory of motherhood.” (Apr.)