Finished: The Farm (Smith) Pretty good page turner by the same author who wrote the Child 44 trilogy that I really liked! The Farm wasn't quite as good, but still a book I enjoyed. It's about a twenty-something son, Daniel, in the UK whose parents have moved to retire on a farm in Sweden. Daniel, who is gay, has not been to visit his parents in the year since they've gone because he's promised his partner that he would tell his parents about them the next time he sees them. So, in the time that he hasn't seen them, apparently alot has happened to his parents! Daniel gets a call from his father in a panic one night telling him that his mother has gone a bit off the deep end, has had delusions, thinks there's a conspiracy of people out to get her, and that she was put in a mental hospital, but had convinced the doctors there she was lucid and had checked herself out. Daniel is in shock, but immediately books a ticket to head to Sweden! While he's at the airport, he gets an equally emphatic phone call from his mother saying, don't believe a word your father says if he calls you! He's in on a conspiracy to try and have me committed! I've just landed in London if you'll pick me up at the airport. Flummoxed, Daniel doesn't know who or what to believe! Neither of his parents has ever been an alarmist, and as a matter of fact, they've never even fought in front of him. Before he can call his father back, and because he's already at the airport, Daniel sees his mother almost immediately. She's thin, ragged and looking afraid. She insists that Daniel take her where she can start at the beginning and tell him the entire story. What ensues is a tale of possible sexual abuse and abduction and death of a teenage girl who has been adopted by their neighbors at the farm. The problem is, their neighbor farmer is also a town bigwig who happens to be best friends with the mayor, the police chief, and the psychiatric doctor! Daniel's mother has arrived with a satchel full of evidence such as newspaper clippings, written letters, etc. When Daniel's father keeps trying to call in the middle of their conversations, Daniel's mother tells him they must find another place to talk because he doesn't know his father anymore, he's changed. He's lying and will actually be on a plane to London to capture her. Daniel takes his mother to a hotel to hear the rest of her far-fetched story and promises her he will think only in her best interests. Sure enough, Daniel's father arrives in London very quickly, along with the psychiatrist who had committed his mother. Daniel doesn't know what to think, but he does take his mother to a local facility for her own safety as her behavior is getting more and more erratic. His mother considers this a huge betrayal, especially after her husband and former doctor arrive. She quickly falls into a state of non-communication and not eating. After a couple of months, Daniel is despondent at his mother's condition and feels terribly guilty. He decides to fly to the farm in Sweden and see if there is anything to his mother's story and all her evidence. He does meet the next door neighbor and sees how controlling a man he is. ****SPOILERS**** If you are reading this and don't want to know the ending, then quit reading now! So, even though the man is very unpleasant, as his mother described, Daniel finds out that he never harmed his adopted daughter, Mia. Instead, Mia got tired of being controlled, and one night when the mayor, her father's friend, comes on to her, she runs away with her boyfriend. She'd actually grown close to Daniel's mother, who had told her the story of running away from her own childhood home in Sweden when she was falsely suspected of drowning her best friend in a fit of jealousy! Daniel finally tracks down Mia, who is living with her boyfriend, and pleads for her to come back to the UK and see his mother so she can see she's alive. He's convinced it will help her out of her psychosis. While in Sweden, Daniel also visits his grandfather, who he has never met, since his mother ran away at 16. He sees a creepy shed that his mother described in the notes of her evidence as being a shed on the property of their neighboring farmer. Daniel goes to the shed, and seeing the inside, realizes that it was a secret room that his grandfather kept. He suddenly realizes that everything was in his mother's head, all her experiences after she moved back to Sweden, because her own father had sexually abused her when she turned 14!! The grandfather makes no apologies, in a very spine-chilling conversation with Daniel. Daniel wants to get the heck out of Dodge, and take Mia back with him to help his mother back to sanity. At the very end, after Mia spends hours talking with his mother, for the first time in months, his mother wants to see both him and his father to talk. Very eerie book at the end. So sad that it was all in her head, but then I guess a somewhat happy ending as she's able to realize it all came from what happened to her as a teenager. As it turns out...there never even WAS a best friend who was drowned. Even that girl was the figment of his mother's imagination who she made up to get through the abuse.