The Most Wanted - Softcover

Mitchard, Jacquelyn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0002257378 ISBN 13: 9780002257374

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1999

Synopsis

The long awaited second novel from Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of the million-copy selling The Deep End of the Ocean.

Intensely erotic, The Most Wanted is also a romance in the epic tradition, about love that can come along once in a lifetime and challenge all of us to break the rules.

Arley Mowbray, only fourteen years old, is dreaming her life away in South Texas when – defying all earthly logic – she falls in love, at hurricane force, with an outlaw and secretly becomes his wife. Public-aid lawyer Annie Singer, whose own careful, well-ordered life is catapulted into change from the moment she meets Arley, will become first the girl’s advocate and defender, then the closest thing to a loving mother Arley will ever have. What happens to Arley and her husband, Dillon LeGrande, is the stuff of legend. He will break out of prison on a terrifying errand, but is it to claim his wife and their baby daughter or to destroy them? His love will put them into nearly unthinkable danger – danger Arley and even Annie will find too compelling to ignore, too seductive to flee.

No other writer has Mitchard’s fierce, brave and tender insights into the bonds of mothers and daughters. Larger than life, yet the very stuff of life itself, The Most Wanted is the tour de force that the many who treasure The Deep End of the Ocean have been waiting for.

About this title

Review

Arley Mowbray is a drop-dead gorgeous 14-year-old, who, with her long, muscular frame and mature, collected manner could easily pass for 18. And pass she does. On a dare from her outspoken best friend, Elena Gutierrez, Arley writes to convict Dillon LeGrande in prison and convinces him she's a college student (though she hasn't made it out of junior high). Therein begins an ill-fated love story that myths are made of and men die for--except that's not what Dillon has in mind. Living in south Texas in a poor Tex-Mex community, Arley dreams of a less provincial life and secretly begins a love affair with Dillon via correspondence, which produces a flurry of poetry and achy-breaky love songs. Against the wishes of family and friends, Arley weds her amour, who promptly fathers her child, breaks out of prison and mysteriously disappears. Fortunately for Arley, she has found a guardian angel in the form of Annie Singer, a straight-talking public defender from New York. Annie becomes the mother Arley never had, protecting her from Dillon and a love-starved home. Despite the strength of their bond, both underestimate Dillon's determination to get his child, no matter the cost. Jacquelyn Mitchard's first novel, The Deep End of the Ocean, was the first to receive Oprah's benediction, instantly making it a bestseller and thrusting Mitchard into the halls of literary stardom. Oprah's picks tend to stay within the thematic boundaries of overcoming dysfunction, harping on the nitty-gritty details of abuse. However, The Most Wanted boldly strides away from this and examines the many dimensions of motherhood, realistically depicting the ties that bind women, while supporting beyond debate that, yes, good girls do fall for bad boys. --Rebekah Warren, Amazon.com

Review

Acclaim for The Deep End of the Ocean:

‘Masterfully paced... A story of one family’s slow tumble back into light.’
Los Angeles Times

‘A drama with the tension of a thriller... that moves deeply into the emotional territory of family ties.’
People

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0002257378
• ISBN 13: 9780002257374
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 407