Bringing Maggie Home by Kim Vogel Sawyer (Review)

Decades of Loss, an Unsolved Mystery, 
and a Rift Spanning Three Generations

Hazel DeFord is a woman haunted by her past. While berry picking in a blackberry thicket in 1943, ten-year old Hazel momentarily turns her back on her three-year old sister Maggie and the young girl disappears.

Almost seventy years later, the mystery remains unsolved and the secret guilt Hazel carries has alienated her from her daughter Diane, who can’t understand her mother’s over-protectiveness and near paranoia. While Diane resents her mother’s inexplicable eccentricities, her daughter Meghan—a cold case agent—cherishes her grandmother’s lavish attention and affection.
 
When a traffic accident forces Meghan to take a six-week leave-of-absence to recover, all three generations of DeFord women find themselves unexpectedly under the same roof. Meghan knows she will have to act as a mediator between the two headstrong and contentious women. But when they uncover Hazel’s painful secret, will Meghan also be able to use her investigative prowess to solve the family mystery and help both women recover all that’s been lost?

Amazon / Goodreads

Three generations affected by one tragedy.

When Meghan visits her grandmother to recover from an accident that leaves her ankle broken and in a cast, she isn’t expecting her mother to answer the door. Determined to make the most of her time with her beloved grandmother, Meghan resigns herself to playing the peacemaker between her mom and grandmother.

Meghan has also brought with her photos, memories, and plans to create a scrapbook of her visits with Grandma Hazel through the years. When she digs out a box of photos her grandmother told her about, Meghan and her mom, Diane, learn a secret Hazel has been keeping for almost eighty years. She had a sister who went missing on her watch.

Kim Vogel Sawyer explores relationships and how they shape us in her newest release. Hazel’s life turned upside down when Maggie disappeared. Her parents changed and her own fear of losing someone else she loved smothered her daughter Diane. So Diane raised her daughter in opposition to the way she was raised.

As these three women discover that love is expressed in different ways, Meghan is determined to give her grandmother closure as far as Maggie is concerned. As a cold case detective, she has unique skills—and a faithful partner—to help find out what happened to Maggie.

The combination of the women’s relationships, the tension of them all living together, and they mystery surrounding Maggie that grows throughout the book combined to not only engage me to the point it was hard to put the book down but also examine my own relationships that aren’t quite what I want them to be.

I receive complimentary books for review from publishers, publicists, and/or authors, including NetGalley. I am not required to write positive reviews. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.