Home Again, Home Again by Cynthia MacGregor
In real life—and in the novel Home Again, Home Again—when an abducted child is found, the story isn’t over. In fact, it’s barely begun.
Even adults who are abducted have been known to identify with their kidnappers. Picture, then, a four-year-old child, already in a comfortable relationship with his abductor (a household employee who wants him for her own child), who, when taken, is told that his parents have died and that his abductor is all that stands between him and “the orphan place.” Give him four years of living with her, and he’s going to get very attached to her.
Small wonder that, when he is finally returned to his parents, he doesn’t remember them, feels he’s just been taken from his rightful mom (the kidnapper), and is very resentful. To that mix add a younger brother, born during an unprotected moment between the grieving parents, who has his own problems—just what is his problem whenever he hears a siren, and what is behind his frequent runs to the bathroom to pee, which the doctors have ruled psychological?—and the parents themselves, estranged as a result of the tensions arising from the kidnapping. Home Again, Home Again is a gripping emotional drama in which finding the missing child is far from the end of the story.
Read the novel here.
