Alice
McDermott Author of Charming Billy
Winner of the 1998 National Book Award
Fifteen-year-old
Theresa, a beautiful, swan like figure on the brink of adulthood,
is the focus of Alice McDermott's "evocative, gently funny
and resonant" (Publishers Weekly) new novel, Child of
My Heart. She is the most sought-after babysitter and dog
walker in all of East Hampton, where her working-class, Irish
Catholic parents moved to expose her to potential wealthy husbands.
Uncannily
adored by children and animals alike, Theresa, together with
her visiting eight-year-old cousin, Daisy, discovers the harshness
and frailty that lie beneath the veneer of her privileged surroundings
while the uncertainties in their own lives loom hauntingly in
the still summer air.
