8 /10 1 Votes
Country United States ISBN 978-1-4177-7265-0 | 4/5 Goodreads Publication date August 2005 Originally published August 2005 Original language English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Publisher Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Media type Print (Hardcover, Paperback) Pages 218 (Paperback and hard cover) Genres Fiction, Science Fiction, Thriller, Suspense, Children's literature, Speculative fiction Similar Works by Margaret Peterson Haddix, Aunt books, Children's literature | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Double Identity is a 2005 young adult novel by Margaret Peterson Haddix.
Contents
Summary
Bethany Cole lives a normal life until her parents, Walter and Hillary, abruptly ditch her, where she is introduced to her aunt, Myrlie Wilkers, whom Bethany has never met. She also lives in Sanderfield, Illinois. Bethany overhears her father telling Myrlie that Bethany does not know anything about Elizabeth. She soon realizes her parents are abandoning her without an explanation, but she begrudgingly settles in.
As she lives with Myrlie, her aunt unwittingly is able to guess all of Bethany's favourite foods. Bethany's interest in Elizabeth is sparked when one of Myrlie's friends mistake Bethany for Elizabeth. Though Myrlie has promised Walter not to tell Bethany about Elizabeth, her aunt reveals that Elizabeth was Bethany's sister, who died in a car accident before Bethany was born. Hillary had been driving the car and Myrlie's husband and Elizabeth died in the crash, though Myrlie's daughter Joss survived. Joss, who had been Elizabeth's best friend, initially mistakes Bethany for Elizabeth, noting that their exact resemblance. After seeing some home videos of Elizabeth and Joss as children, Bethany confirms that she and Elizabeth are identical, save a small scar under Elizabeth's left eye.
Myrlie receives a package with four forged birth certificates from different states and ten thousand dollars cash. A note accompanying it explains Walter and Hillary's reasons for leaving Bethany with Myrlie. Soon afterward, Hillary calls, asking for Elizabeth; when Bethany tries to reassure her mother, Hillary, believing she is talking to Elizabeth, tells her daughter that they can clone her if they manage to save some of her cells. Bethany realizes that she is Elizabeth's clone, explaining why Myrlie knew what foods she would like and why they look exactly the same. Her parents even raised her in a similar environment with the same toys to try to replicate their first daughter.
Over the next few days, Bethany encounters a mysterious man, who seems to know who she is, though Joss's arrival drives the man away. The man, identifying himself as "Dalton", appears at Myrlie's house to find Walter and Bethany begins to notice a strange car driving by the house several times.
A few days later, Joss, Myrlie, and Bethany later go to the Harvest Festival, where they see Bethany's parents and Dalton. It is revealed that Dalton Van Dyne gave Bethany's father money to create a clone of himself because he felt a clone would be the only person who would love him. Instead of creating that clone, Walter created a clone of Elizabeth, believing that while Van Dyne would have another chance, Elizabeth wouldn't have one. When Bethany realizes this, she tells him, but the entire town hears it as well.
In the epilogue, Bethany is thirteen and living in Sanderfield. She explains to the reader that her parents made four embryos cloned from Elizabeth and implanted three of them into three surrogates and one into Hillary. The babies of the surrogates died very soon after birth, but Bethany, her mother's baby, survived. The book ends with the family planting a ginkgo in honor of Bethany next to the trees that were planted for Elizabeth and Joss.