Several years ago, on one of our trips to The Outer Banks of North Carolina, I discovered the author Diane Chamberlain. Her Keeper of the Light trilogy was the perfect read for an area known for its lighthouses. Since then, she is one of the authors that I like to bring on our vacation to Hatteras Island. Some of her books have been good some not so much. THE SECRET LIFE OF CEECEE WILKES was good.
Sixteen year old CeeCee Wilkes has been alone since the death of her mother four years earlier. She had spent most of those four years in various foster home, but is now on her own. She is working as a waitress in a college town diner, saving money to start college.
When grad student Timothy Gleason becomes her boyfriend/lover there is nothing that she will not do for him. He makes her feel important and loved, the first that she has felt that way since the death of her mother.
Twenty years later, CeeCee is now Eve Bailey and is happily married with two grown daughters. Her life has been good, until the day that she sees on the news that Timothy has been arrested for the murder of a woman and her infant. Eve knows that she is the only person who can save Timothy from the death penalty . She had been there when the woman died;Timothy had not. Telling the truth may save Timothy, but it will destroy the new life that she has so carefully created for herself and the family that she loves.
THE SECRET LIFE OF CEECEE WILKES is a good book for vacation reading. The heroine is a young girl who quickly arouses our sympathy. The early chapters begin with a section from the letters that her mother had written to her before she died. We are on CeeCee’s side even when she is responsible for the unthinkable.
Many people in the book have secrets of their own, some that we never learn, We meet people who live lives completely off the grid making us wonder how easy it would be to develop a new identity and go on with a regular, normal life.
Author Diane Chamberlain makes us take a look at what constitutes family love and what do you do when loyalty and the sense of right and wrong clash with that love. Her books may be a hit or miss thing, but if you need a light vacation read, she might be worth the gamble.
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