FREE: The Real Mother by Judith Michael

The listing, The Real Mother by Judith Michael has ended.

This 2005 paperback looks very good. There are no marking in the book but the spine ha a lot of creasing..
Sara Elliott is forced to return to Chicago to care for her sisters and must contend with her black-sheep brother, who is determined to undermine her. To find her way, Sara must discover the full meaning of family.
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. She finds a job and settles into the house she grew up in, building a life for ten-year-old Doug and teenagers Carrie and Abby. But Sara has another brother, Mack, now twenty, who left home three years earlier. Suddenly he reappears, cheerful and unconcerned, as if he had never broken his promise to stay and help Sara with the children and the house. With bewildering volatility, Mack swings from kindness to cruelty, affection to hostility, keeping the family always on edge, his past and present a mystery. Mack challenges all Sara has achieved. And just when she thinks her life has room only for work and family, she meets Reuben Lister, a client from New York. Together, Sara and Reuben find answers to the questions: What is a mother? What is a parent? What is a family?