The Lost Bird, by Margaret Coel

Retrieved from: someone else's library
(0425170594), 1999
Suggested by: The List
My Ratings: 7 Merit, 8 Interest, 7 Fun

It's the week of turning corners in relationships in my List series!

The priest who served the mission 35 years ago returns as Father John's assistant. Two weeks after his return, he is gunned down while paying a visit to a parishioner. Meanwhile, Vicki has been asked by a movie star to track down her birth parents, whom she is convinced are Arapaho.

Naturally, the two events are related. John first insists that he was the intended shooting victim, and the police concur. Then the events of 35 years ago--a dozen newborn babies' deaths from "tainted water"--begin to suggest a pattern to Vicki. It turns out a doctor sold the light-skinned babies born that year on the black market adoption market, with the help of the county medical examiner who falsified death certificates and forced the parents to bury the rock-filled caskets sealed out of fear of contamination. That doctor is now a famous pediatrician with a lot to lose if people find out he's a baby-stealer. He's more than willing to kill more people (he's already had the M.E. and a nurse who got nervous 35 years ago killed) to keep everything quiet.

Vicki and John finally resolved their attraction to one another, in a really stupid way. In my opinion. It just seems really out of character and abrupt. But perhaps the next book will bring a better shape to their new relationship.