Once Upon a Time...there was a Girl

"My Calli…our Calli is missing, Tom." Delia Tucker's midnight call to Tom Mallory changes his plans, and his life. The tears from a woman he'd never known to cry, and the desperation in her voice forced Tom Mallory to remember the night he'd walked away from the woman's daughter, Calli Tucker, and never look back. And now, he realizes, the guilt had never disappeared. Tom's search for the girl-turned evangelist, forces Tom to revisit his past, something he has never liked doing. He must recall his time in Blue Bayou, and the girl he'd hurt when he'd left so suddenly. Tom wouldn't know that young Calli secretly delivered a child at a New Orleans Catholic orphanage and had tearfully left her baby girl with the nuns who promised they'd find a perfect home for the beautiful Lucia Benet. He wouldn't know that in spite of the fact that the five-month-old Lucia was adopted by prominent Louisiana Senator Kent Whittington, and his socialite wife Cindy King Whittington, the child's life was anything but perfect. At nine, Lucia overhears a phone conversation in which her mother's rant reveals the imperfection of her life. It is at this moment she begins her quest to discover her own identity. A search that leads to heartbreak and disaster in the small town of Blue Bayou, Louisiana. Lucia's dogged search for the mother she needs as much as she hates, brings trouble into Blue Bayou, reveals unbelievable truths about those in Calli Tucker's closest circle, and leaves the good pastor on the brink of death.