The Secrets In Her Name

For twelve years, Carmen Miller has built a quiet life far away from the family she left behind.

At nineteen, Carmen disappeared from her hometown with a newborn daughter and a secret she swore would never follow them. She changed their last name to Miller, moved somewhere no one knew them, and devoted herself to giving Callie the childhood she deserved.

Callie, now twelve, has never questioned why it's always been just her and her mother. She knows almost nothing about her biological family, but she has never felt like she needed to.

Until a seventh-grade family-tree assignment forces her to ask questions Carmen isn't prepared to answer.

Why doesn't Callie have grandparents? Why won't her mother talk about where she grew up? And why does an old photograph show Carmen holding a newborn baby under a completely different surname?

As Callie begins piecing together clues from old photographs, documents, and family records, she discovers that Miller isn't the name she was born with.

Her biological surname is Bennett-and the Bennett family has been hiding a secret of its own.

At the center of that secret is Daniel Bennett, Carmen's uncle and Callie's biological father, whose connection to Carmen is the reason she fled home and spent twelve years keeping Callie away from the family.

But Callie is only twelve, and Carmen isn't ready to tell her daughter everything at once.

As the past begins closing in on the life Carmen worked so hard to build, mother and daughter are forced to face painful questions about family, identity, trust, and the difference between keeping a secret to protect someone and keeping it because you're afraid of what the truth will destroy.

Sometimes the family you're born into isn't the family that saves you.

And sometimes, protecting the person you love most means finding the courage to finally tell them the truth.