The Orphan Daughter

The Orphan Daughter
366 Pages
ISBN 978-1503901322

At forty-five, Jane McArdle has experienced her share of life’s twists and turns. Yet she’s shaken by the sudden death of her estranged half sister and the news that she’s now the guardian of her orphaned niece, Lucy.

Still nurturing unresolved grief from a marriage bookended by loss, as well as her guilt over her adult son’s imperfect upbringing, Jane is her own worst enemy, content to focus on her small Michigan farm. Now, confronted with a traumatized eleven-year-old, the prickly empty nester is thrust into motherhood again, unsure she’ll do any better this time.

City girl Lucy is bewildered by aloof Aunt Jane and a new life in rural Michigan. The debilitating phobia Lucy has developed since her parents’ deaths keeps her stuck in this place that’s nothing like home. She secretly plots to run away to live with other relatives. Jane and Lucy must decide if they’ll both endure yet another loss—each other—or if their paths will lead them to forge a new family together.

Cari Noga

About Cari Noga (Traverse City, Michigan Author)

Cari Noga

Cari Noga grew up in Dearborn, Mich. and earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1991. For 10 years she covered everything from politics to pigs and school boards to soybeans at daily newspapers in Illinois, Iowa and Michigan.

After aspiring to write fiction for many years, she wrote her first novel, Sparrow Migrations, as part of National Novel Writing Month in 2010. A tale of five characters connected by 2009’s Miracle on the Hudson plane crash, Sparrow Migrations was a semifinalist in the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest (top 1 percent). Publishers Weekly described the manuscript as “brimming with humanity and grace.” Sparrow’s protagonist, Robby Palmer, a 12-year-old boy with autism, and his parents, Sam and Linda, embody many experiences Cari and her husband have had as parents to an autistic son.

Cari's second novel (begun during NaNoWriMo 2013) will be released in May 2018. She lives in Traverse City with her husband and their two children. In her spare time she enjoys writing haiku on Twitter.

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