The highest compliment I can pay a book: I couldn’t put it down; I was up way past my bedtime so I could finish reading it. That’s what happened last night. I just had to finish THE SECOND MOTHER before I could go to sleep.

Like all Jenny Milchman’s novels before, which either take place in or are about someone from Wedeskyull, a small town in the mountains of New York, THE SECOND MOTHER begins there. Julie, a niece of the disgraced ex-chief of the Wedeskyull police, is grieving the death of her baby girl. She wants to get away from Wedeskyull so decides to resume her teaching career on a small island off the coast of Maine. There is where she experiences even greater trouble.

The island is full of secrets and lies. Has Julie become incarcerated in a mental institution?

Disregard a job application that asks marital status and number of children. Accept the unlikely abilities of elementary-school-age children. Go with it. Then you have here a most excellent and suspenseful story.