The Mistake

Product Description

Potent, provocative and compulsively readable: The Mistake is compelling commercial women's fiction with a dark edge.

Jodie Garrow is a teenager from the wrong side of the tracks when she falls pregnant. Scared, alone and desperate to make something of her life, she makes the decision to adopt out her baby – and tells nobody.

Twenty-five years on, Jodie has built a new life and a new family. But when a chance meeting brings the adoption to the notice of the authorities, Jodie becomes caught in a nationwide police investigation, and the centre of a media witch-hunt.

What happened to Jodie's baby? And where is she now? The fallout from Jodie's past puts her whole family under the microscope, and her husband and daughter must re-examine everything they believed to be true.

The Mistake is the story of a mother and the media's powerful role in shaping our opinions. With astonishing insight, it cuts to the heart of what makes a family, and asks us whether we can ever truly know another person.

Reviews for The Mistake

'The kind of novel that will have you second-guessing your own reactions and skilfully exposes the troubling expectations we resort to in the absence of hard evidence.' The Age

'Tense and involving ... credible and accomplished.' The Australian

'A moving book that relentlessly hits the mark.' Sydney Morning Herald

'Compelling, well-paced and suspenseful' Courier-Mail

'James is masterful at seamlessly ratcheting up the tension. Unputdownable.' Good Reading Magazine