Review by Donna Freydkin

In her third novel, actress/author Elaine Kagan tells the intertwined tales of a teen-ager forced to give her baby up for adoption, and her grown daughter's search for her some 30 years later. Unfortunately, we've seen and heard it all many times before. Although Kagan does touch on some of the compelling issues surrounding adoption, she unfortunately eschews depth in favor of a sappy plot with a familiar ending.

The novel opens in 1959, when tame teen-ager Jenny Jaffe defies her parents by falling for unsavory, hot-tempered drifter Will McDonald. Alone, Jenny is aloof and nondescript. Will transforms her passivity into a greed for life. The two quickly become heavily involved, and Jenny ends up pregnant at her high school graduation. Will promises to marry Jenny, but disappears from town instead. The distraught teen is quickly shipped off to a home for unwed pregnant girls, where she secretly has her baby and, despite last-minute misgivings, gives her up for adoption.

Kagan next picks up with Claudia, Jenny's thirty-something biological daughter who is haltingly searching for her birth mother. Raised by adoring adoptive parents but plagued by dreams of her "other mother," Claudia hopes that finding her biological mother will give her closure and a sense of completion. With the help of a search agent, she tracks Jenny down in New York. In Jenny, Claudia finds a woman emotionally stunted by Will's abandonment -- one who has spent her life mourning the man she lost and yearning for the baby she gave away.

Claudia's flawless adoptive parents, meanwhile, remain fairly nonchalant about their daughter's quest for her biological parents. In fact, it appears her gruffly loving dad and sweet homemaker mom would be more upset if they discovered stains on their furniture.

After an initially euphoric reunion with Jenny, Claudia develops a distant but cordial relationship with her mother. Despite her initial hesitation to discuss Will, Jenny finally divulges enough information to Claudia for her to find him.

Claudia locates her dad in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where he is living the rugged life of a modern cowboy, and accosts him at his doorstep. Ecstatic at seeing his daughter for the first time, he quickly bonds with Claudia and lets her know that he, too, still harbors deep feelings for Jenny. Upon learning the true circumstances behind Will's abrupt departure from Jenny's life, Claudia sets out to reunite her star-crossed parents.

At this point, "Somebody's Baby" dissolves into a standard schlock romance. Packed with stock characters who follow a transparent story line, Kagan's novel just peters out into a gushingly emotional story of love found, lost, and sort-of found again. Couple the cliched plot with a thoroughly predictable ending, and you have the latest mindless book to hit store shelves just in time for beach reading.

Described by some as the American "Secrets and Lies," "Somebody's Baby" actually falls far short of the pathos and realism of Mike Leigh's movie. Where Leigh skillfully demonstrated how the unforeseen arrival of a birth child can impact an already fractured family, Kagan opts for a breezy story that skims over an adopted child's choice to find her biological parents. With it's made-for-TV ending, it's no surprise that the movie rights have already been optioned by United Artists.

Kagan never examines the most compelling issue in the book -- the question of nature versus nurture when it comes to adopted children and their parents. Can Claudia squeeze two mothers into her life without wrecking the bond with her adoptive parents? Unfortunately, Kagan fails to convey Claudia's internal struggle between the mother who bore her and the adoptive parents who gave her life.

There's not much to say about a book that let's you guess its conclusion before you're even halfway through it. "Somebody's Baby" is well-written, often engaging and always entertaining, but overall, it lacks depth and substance. Like a large order of french fries, "Somebody's Baby" may taste great at first, but it is ultimately just innocuous junk-food for the mind.