Secret Keeper

by Kate Morton

This book is the third one I have read by this author.  I really enjoyed the first one, Forgotten Garden, but found the second, House at Riverton, disappointing.  This one was much better than the second one, I am not sure how I feel it compares to the first as it has been a long time since I read it.

The story is about a women who tries to investigate a crime she witnessed when she was 16.  She saw her mother kill a man who came to their house.  As she digs into the past she finds out that her mother had a fiancee, whom she didn't marry and a friend, Vivienne, whom it appears she had a falling out with.

As she goes through family photos and tries to get her mother who has dimension and who is dying, to open up about the future, she and her brother check other leads to fill in the picture.  Her mother admits that she had a past she regrets and that she is glad to have had a second chance for a happy life.

The main character finds out that the women who is her mother is not really who she claims to be -- rather the friend of the person they believe to be their mother who has taken their "mother's name" and identity.
The women they thought was their mother was killed in the bombings and the second women took the opportunity to escape to a new life away from her abusive husband.  The man who showed up at her home, and whom she killed, was her first husband.

The story was very well told, alternating between the war years and the present.  The story keeps you guessing until the end.  The only thing I found puzzling is that although the women's husband was told that she died in the bombings, he tracks down the woman.  How did he find out she wasn't really dead?
That is never explained.