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wonderful read by a great author...too bad she retired, I miss her books.

One of LaVyrle Spencer's best contemporary novels. When a new student transfers to his school, Tom needs only to look at him to see that this teenager is the son he never knew he had, the result of a one-night stand on the eve of Tom's wedding years before.

A seemingly Norman Rockwell-like family is at the center of Spencer's (Family Blessings) latest novel, and, as usual, Spencer reveals the hard truths that lie beneath the bright exterior. On the first day of school, high-school principal Tom Gardner thinks his biggest problem is finding the shipment of textbooks for his wife Claire's English class; but the most difficult ordeal of his life is about to begin. Tom's real troubles start when he meets a new student, Kent Arens, who turns out to be smart, well-mannered, a star athlete-and the illegitimate son Tom never knew he had, conceived during a one-night stand 18 years ago, just before Tom married Claire.

I love this book. It is a story about a warm loving family and how they overcome their problems. Very absorbing. I did not want to put it down.

What happens if in one night of indescretion, at a man's bachelor party, a woman becomes pregnant and never tells the man? The man and woman never really knew each other and there was no reason that they would ever see each other again.

The woman raises the child, a son, as a single parent. He's a well adjusted teen -- excels in school and sports. Then, 17 years later, the woman and her son move to a new town and the man who fathered the child is the principal of the high school, his wife teaches honors English and he has a son, the same age as the illegitimate son and a daughter a year or so younger.

Revealing this truth could destroy the marriage he's come to cherish despite it's rocky start but events force him t reveal the truth to wife. Especially once he learns that his daughter is interested in dating the boy -- who is actually her half-brother.

This is what happens when Monica Arens moves to a St Paul suburb with her son, Kent. The school principal is Tom Gardner and his wife Claire, son Robby and daugher Chelsea. Learning the truth all these years later threatens to drive a permanent wedge into his marriage and destroy the love among the family members.