Mary Sheldon's fiction debut, Halfway Home, heralded the arrival of a genuinely talented writer who is able to engage readers' hearts with her novel about a woman's search for her mother's love. "Reflection" more than lives up to the promise of Sheldon's first work of fiction, with its complex and provocative premise and the consummate skill with which Sheldon spins her story. "Reflection" pivots on a custody battle, as two parents fight for their daughter, Caroline. Her mother lives in Los Angeles and is an actress. Her father, an architect, lives in New York. In the first scene of the book, custody of Caroline has gone to her mother; in the second, to her father. The rest of the novel is played out in alternating scenarios, as the reader follows Caroline's two parallel lives -- and the two very different people she could become. And, in each identity, the same man of her dreams appears -- but with dramatically opposite results. At the story's climax, a cataclysmic event occurs and destiny steps in, leaving the reader to wonder if the two Carolines are really different after all.