![]() ![]() With Atlee in her life, Carol has someone she can mother, showering affection and guidance upon Atlee.īaldacci has deservedly received praise for believably writing the books from a female viewpoint, but he doesn't find it particularly remarkable. Carol strives to reel Atlee back when she is tempted to make impulsive decisions or engage in rash behavior. So each of the women benefits from the relationship. Atlee's mother, as noted, disappeared from Atlee's life when she was a young woman. She has six grown children, but is estranged from most of them. He sees Carol as exactly the assistant Atlee needed. She assumes the FBI wants her in connection with her escape, not realizing that her scattered recollections relate to a twin sister who has spent years looking for her.Ītlee, meanwhile, continues inching closer to her sister, aided by her assistant, Carol Blum, who has "become something of a surrogate mother to the federal agent, to some degree taking the place of the one who abandoned her." Baldacci notes the partnership between a woman in her 30's and a woman in her 60's is a unique one in contemporary fiction that he was eager to portray. And when she realizes that the FBI is looking for her as a result of the fact that Atlee is closing in on locating her, she complicates matters by going on the run. One, in particular, wants to extract revenge. ![]() She has lived under the assumed name of Eloise Cain after escaping her imprisonment as Rebecca Atkins. "I survived it all," she reminds herself. hand-tooled into her." But she is clever, savvy, and able to outsmart anyone who tries to take advantage of her. She bears emotional and physical scars, "burn marks, lumps, painful knife cuts and other disfigurements. She also developed her athletic prowess, competing as an amateur MMA fighter. While Atlee continued her formal education and excelled as a competitive athlete before joining the FBI, Mercy educated herself, and learned to never rely upon or trust anyone but herself and her infallible instincts. She managed to escape but has never been able to settle down and lead what most people would deem a normal life. But, like Atlee, she proved to be resilient, intelligent, and determined to survive. I'm taking you to another family that wants you. Your mother and father told me to kill you. As they sat in his car he had said, 'They sent me here to take one of you. "'They don't want you anymore,' the man had said that night to the little girl she used to be with the name and history she no longer remembered. When he finally introduces Mercy to readers, he immediately endears her to them with his descriptions of how she was tortured and traumatized by the people to whom she was given by her kidnapper. And complicated."īaldacci unsparingly reveals what Mercy's life has been like since she was kidnapped from the bedroom in which she was sleeping with Atlee on that fateful night when the girls were only six years old. "In the Hollywood version it would be all smiles, hugs, and tears. The sisters have to learn about each other's lives and to trust, which is not an easy proposition for Mercy. Mercy has not carried the same memories of events as Atlee - flashes of memory have always creeped into her consciousness from time to time, but she has never been able to piece together their meaning or significance - or experienced the same propulsive need for reconciliation that Atlee has experienced. They are no longer six-year-old little girls. Their first meeting in thirty years is believably fraught with emotion, confusion, trepidation, and, eventually, relief. The sisters' reunion comes after additional suspense, near-misses, danger, and potential heartbreak. and kept readers clamoring for the next installments in the series. He provides the answers to questions about Mercy, as well as the Pine sisters' extended family, that have plagued Atlee and compelled her unrelenting search. Readers who have followed Atlee Pine's long road to Mercy, the sister she has never stopped searching for, will not be disappointed with bestselling author David Baldacci's handling of the culmination of Atlee's quest. ![]()
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