Up Close and Personal Book

For generations, the Windsors have lived on the family’s grand estate in Crestwood, South Carolina, as intertwined with local life as sweet tea and pecan pie. Now, on the anniversary of her daughter Emily’s death, Sarabess Windsor believes she may be the last to carry the family name - unless she can find her second daughter, Trinity, who disappeared fifteen years ago.

Trinity grew up as Trinity Henderson, adopted by the Windsor foreman and his wife. Trinity was conceived not out of love, but out of Sarabess’s desperate attempt to prolong Emily’s life by providing a bone marrow donor. On her fifteenth birthday, Trinity ran away and hasn’t been seen in Crestwood since. But the town has never forgotten her…especially not handsome lawyer Jake Forrest. And although Jake has no desire to help selfish Sarabess Windsor, the thought of seeing his childhood friend again fills a void in his heart that Jake didn’t even know existed.

Trinity swore never to return to Crestwood. Not for the mother who callously abandoned her, not for the late father she hardly knew, not for the huge family trust she stands to inherit. But some ties - to a place, to a past, to the people we once were and dreams we once had - can never be fully broken. And as family secrets are revealed, and desires old and new come to light, Trinity may discover the one thing she never expected to find in Crestwood: a place to call home at last.

Publishers Weekly

In Michaels' fable-like latest, wicked South Carolina heiress Sarabess Windsor must face the fallout of a decision she made 30 years ago: when her beloved daughter was diagnosed with a potentially fatal illness, doting Sarabess hatched a plan to bear another child solely as a source of bone marrow for little Emily. Donor daughter Trinity, unaware of her parentage, spent her childhood in closely monitored foster care, but forced, like the other children in town, to fawn endlessly over Emily, whose life is extended 13 years by her sister's cells. When Trinity runs away at 15, Sarabess makes sure no one tries to find her, but hapless father Harold, on his deathbed, sets up a trust for Trinity to claim on her 30th birthday. Several months before that day, Sarabess begins to try to finagle the funds for her own use. While Sarabess is without any redeeming qualities, her Trinity is anything but. Readers will root for the plucky heroine and her childhood friend Jake (a lawyer, natch). The finale's shocking revelations are just that, as Michaels, who was written more than 80 novels, somehow does it again. (Aug.)