Love is never the end of the story, only the begining. Mack Hayden, volatile and dangerous, shows up, all smiles, on Sara's doorstep. Sara has been struggling to build a new life for herself and her ten-year-old brother Doug and teenage sisters Carrie and Abby, after she was forced to give up her dreams and come home to Chicago to take care of them. Now Mack, the brother who had abandoned them three years earlier, is threatening to undercut everything she does. Swinging dangerously from kindness to mystery to cruelty, he begins to win over the children with expensive gifts and fascinating stories, challenging Sara's efforts to keep the family together. With events at home and at work seeming out of control, Sara desperately needs an ally. She finds one in Reuben Lister, a transplanted New Yorker, lonely and guarding his own secrets. Dealing with both the past and the present, Reuben and Sara discover a closeness neither has known before, as they find for themselves what truly makes a family.

This book is intended to educate and send a message to a wide audience, both children and adults, about what I feel defines a real mother. In our society, a real mother continues to be thought of as the female who gives birth. Although, that is often the case, it is certainly not always true. With this book, I hope to be a voice for the many women who have had the experience and privilege of raising a child, whether or not they gave birth to that child. May these women be recognized for whom they are: the real mothers.

After an adoptive mother tells her daughter all the reasons that she is her "real mother," the young girl realizes that her mother is right, even though they do not look alike.

A young Jewish child is smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto. She is sent to live with a dear friend of her mother's, Helen Dobinsky. Helen is a Catholic woman living in Warsaw, who is willing to risk the safety of her own family in order to provide a home for this precious little girl. However, no one must find out that the Dobinski family is harboring a Jewish child or they could face severe punishment, even death. Keeping such a dangerous secret is treacherous like walking a tightrope. There are spies everywhere, and it is impossible to know who can be trusted. Just how much fear and pain will one woman endure in order to save the life of an innocent child who is not her blood? And so, we must ask the question: "Who is the real mother? Is it the mother who gave birth to the child, or the mother who risked everything to raise her?"

From "Baa, Baa Black Sheep" to "Ring Aroundthe Rosie," this book has the Mother Goose rhymes children know and love.