It's Our Bloodline: A Novel

Cindy knows that Jones is selfish, reckless, and unprepared to become a father. Still, she refuses to give up her unborn child. When her mother turns against her, Cindy's closest friends, Marsha and Erica, become the family she desperately needs. Then one violent night changes everything. Erica is killed by a stray bullet, and the shock sends Cindy into premature labor. Her daughter, Claudine, enters the world beneath the shadow of tragedy, while Jones abandons them and disappears without explanation. Determined to honor Erica's memory, Cindy and Marsha build a better future, raise Claudine together, and create the family that Jones refused to provide. Far from Philadelphia, Jones assumes a new name and constructs a respectable life, burying every trace of the man he once was. Years later, Claudine leaves home to begin a new chapter of her own. Intelligent, ambitious, and still haunted by the father who rejected her, she finds herself drawn to Leon-a successful, attentive older man who appears to possess everything her father lacked. Their connection is immediate, their similarities uncanny, and their romance quickly moves toward marriage. But as Claudine begins searching for the father she has never known, the past starts closing in. What begins as a hopeful love story becomes a devastating collision of identity, abandonment, deception, and desire. Because some secrets refuse to remain buried-and sometimes the connection between two people runs far deeper than either of them could ever imagine. It's Our Bloodline is a provocative family drama about friendship, grief, reinvention, and the consequences that follow when a person attempts to escape the life-and the people-he left behind.