(77) As the Crow Flies by Jeffrey Archer

This is about the best novel I have read in the last three months. As my hair becomes more grey, I seldom lose sleep over reading. This is one book that I did not put down. As I well know there is not much point in trying to fall asleep in vain over wondering about the story line. I read the last page at about five in the morning. I certainly remember doing that with Grisham's The Testament.

There are a lot of good books in the libraries. But sad to say, not many of them are wrote to be believable. Novels are a great way to escape. Yet I am partial to a story that seems real. Becky in the story reminds me of one of my classmates who was well endowed weight wise in my teenage years. Whether my friend was partial to cream buns like Becky, I don't really know. But both the character and the girl are only children, so I presume both must have been at least a little spoiled. Like Becky, my friend lost a fair amount of weight in her early twenties. I heard that the lawyers in the firm she chambered voted her as the prettiest student.

While young men went about sowing their wild oats, I suppose they did not give a thought to the children they left behind. Some would be aborted to protect the good name of the would be mom. Those who were born faced a mine field of half sisters or brothers. What if one married such a "lost sibling", would that mean that one's children would be deaf and blind?

One of my distant cousins married a girl against his mother's wishes. They have a daughter that is normal. After many years, they tried in vain to give the little girl a sibling. At last they decided not to wait but went to a fertility doctor. The second child they have is far from normal, one could see from the number of fingers and toes of the new born. This child is the one in a few millions who inherited the same rare warp gene from both parents. When the boy requires a compatible bone marrow donor, all the aunts and uncles by blood went for tissue typing. As they compared notes, they realized three of the siblings are of blood types that are not probable from the same set of parents. In other words, at least these three siblings are born from fathers that are not their legal father. At the end of this debacle, all is swept under the carpet. I was there when my cousin's mother objected vehemently against the new girl friend but she could not give a single valid reason. Finally I understood her agony, old sins cast long shadows. She must have dreaded seeing the future grand children from day one of meeting the would be daughter-in-law.