Plot summary

The Brennan family consists of husband and wife Keith and Janelle, an aspiring writer who gave up a lucrative corporate career to pursue that writing, and a deputy sheriff, respectively, and their three children: mid-teen Toby, and adolescents Lisa and Jackson, the latter adopted. Their life is upended when Janelle is part of team involved in the case of Lila Whittaker, an aged and reclusive backwoods mountain woman, who has just died, evidence that she was taking care of an unknown child. In finding that child, sixteen year old Finch, Janelle becomes protective of him in wanting to keep to the promises she makes to him in he not understanding general social mores beyond what little he has read in the few books Lila had gotten for him in he never having left Bryers Rock Mountain. In knowing that the situation in which Child Protective Services is planning on placing him is not in Finch's best interest, Janelle comes up with the last minute plan to house Finch temporarily under the guise of being in the process of adopting him, that is until a more suitable permanent situation can be found. This situation does not sit well with Keith, who was not consulted prior to Janelle making this decision and who has an imminent deadline to submit materials to his publisher, and especially Toby, who already felt threatened by the entrance of Jackson into their family, let alone someone who he considers somewhat a peer and thus rival for his place in the family. The situation becomes more complex with the arrival onto the scene of Finch's biological mother, Jessica Haig, who came out of nowhere after sixteen years looking for custody, and who, to Janelle, doesn't pass the "smell test" in her coming back into Finch's life at this time as she is backed by who look to be high priced lawyers.

The Brennan family consists of husband and wife Keith and Janelle, an aspiring writer who gave up a lucrative corporate career to pursue that writing, and a deputy sheriff, respectively, and their three children: mid-teen Toby, and adolescents Lisa and Jackson, the latter adopted. Their life is upended when Janelle is part of team involved in the case of Lila Whittaker, an aged and reclusive backwoods mountain woman, who has just died, evidence that she was taking care of an unknown child. In finding that child, sixteen year old Finch, Janelle becomes protective of him in wanting to keep to the promises she makes to him in he not understanding general social mores beyond what little he has read in the few books Lila had gotten for him in he never having left Bryers Rock Mountain. In knowing that the situation in which Child Protective Services is planning on placing him is not in Finch's best interest, Janelle comes up with the last minute plan to house Finch temporarily under the guise of being in the process of adopting him, that is until a more suitable permanent situation can be found. This situation does not sit well with Keith, who was not consulted prior to Janelle making this decision and who has an imminent deadline to submit materials to his publisher, and especially Toby, who already felt threatened by the entrance of Jackson into their family, let alone someone who he considers somewhat a peer and thus rival for his place in the family. The situation becomes more complex with the arrival onto the scene of Finch's biological mother, Jessica Haig, who came out of nowhere after sixteen years looking for custody, and who, to Janelle, doesn't pass the "smell test" in her coming back into Finch's life at this time as she is backed by who look to be high priced lawyers.

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