After becoming pregnant by her cousin, the parents of teenaged Sally Werner try to make her marry him. Sally instead leaves her son with her parents and takes off for parts unknown. On her journey she’s spotted by two brothers who bring her back to their family who start calling her Sally Angel. Sally adopts the name and tries to make a life with these new people, but it’s long before she takes off again. She has another child and makes another name change all the while acting quite selfishly so that her daughter eventually decides to live with her father. Years later that daughter has a daughter named after Sally. It is that Sally who sets the narrative of Follow Me in motion—she wants to know the truth about her father, who has just gotten in contact after many years, and her grandmother’s secret past which is tied into the story of the younger Sally’s father. It took Joanna Scott a long time to finally reach that pay-off so that much of Follow Me is the story of the elder Sally’s troubled life. While parts of Follow Me are interesting, too much of it is Sally making herself out to be a wholly unsympathetic woman.
3/5
Review copy provided by the publisher, Back Bay Books.
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