The Offering A Novel [Paperback]

One innocent mistake… a lifetime of consequences.

One innocent mistake . . . a lifetime of consequences.

After growing up an only child, Amanda Lisandra wants a big family. But since she and her soldier husband can’t afford to have more children right away, Mandy decides to earn money as a gestational carrier for a childless couple. She loves being pregnant, and while carrying the child, she dreams of having her own son and maybe another daughter. . . .

Just when the nearly perfect pregnancy is about to conclude, unexpected tragedy enters Mandy’s world and leaves her reeling. Devastated by grief, she surrenders the child she was carrying and struggles to regain her emotional equilibrium.

Two years later she studies a photograph of the baby she bore and wonders if the unthinkable has happened—could she have inadvertently given away her own biological child? Over the next few months Mandy struggles to decide between the desires of her grief-stricken heart and what’s best for the little boy she has never known.The Offering

Chapter One

Marilee and I were trying to decide whether we should braid her hair or put it in pigtails when Gideon thrust his head into the room. Spotting me behind our daughter, he gave me a look of frustrated disbelief. “Don’t you have an important appointment this morning?”

Shock flew through me as I lowered the silky brown strands in my hands. Of course, this was Monday. At nine I had a tremendously important interview with the Pinellas County school system.

I glanced at the pink clock on my four-year-old daughter’s bureau. I had only an hour to shower and dress, drive across Tampa Bay, and find the school system’s personnel office. Somewhere in the mad rush I also needed to rehearse my responses to standard intlóä