Crossroads Book

Cassie Wright never saw it coming. As the owner of thriving Wright Glassworks, Cassie’s life was quiet, well-ordered . . . until a tragic accident forces her to take in a one-year-old child who has no one else to care for her. As the years pass, Cassie will raise young Gwen as her own, and the girl will flourish in a world of privilege and opportunity. Enter Jewel Fairbanks. Beautiful and conniving, Jewel will touch the lives of both Cassie and Gwen in powerful ways. Both Gwen and Jewel will marry; Gwen will fall for honest, hardworking Stan. And Jewel will marry Jeff, a businessman who owns the company where Stan works. But when Stan makes a shocking discovery on the job, a tangled drama of greed, jealousy, and betrayal will encircle both couples, changing four lives forever—in ways they never could have foreseen.

Publishers Weekly

Plain's tepid latest focuses on two women-privileged but plain Gwen Wright and beautiful but poor Jewel Fairchild. Their lives occasionally intersect, and eventually Jewel marries a wealthy man and discovers that money can't buy happiness. Gwen, meanwhile, marries a poor but honest man-but she still finds herself drawn to Jewel's husband, and the foursome is soon tangled in a web of deceit. Unfortunately, Jewel and Gwen don't evolve throughout the novel; Gwen is a character that some readers might find intolerably perfect-smart, privileged, shy, well-spoken, with simple needs and a tragic past-but any irritation that one might have with her is eliminated by the calculating and shallow Jewel, who is too pathetic to be a legitimate antagonist and too tragic to really be hated. It functions well as a simplistic morality tale. (Nov.)

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