Finished: The Vanishing Half (Bennett) Twin sisters Stella and Desiree Vignes have grown up in the small town of Mallard, Louisiana...a town specifically designed by a "light" black man to be a community for "light" only black families. When the twins are sixteen, they run away to New Orleans to try and make new lives for themselves. When Stella finds work as a secretary passing as a white woman, it is the beginning of the end of the close relationship the sisters have always shared. Stella falls in love with and marries her white boss and leaves for California without so much as a goodbye to Desiree. From there, we witness the two different lives of the sisters, but also how they come back together briefly many years later. Desiree stays away from Mallard and her mother long enough to marry a very dark black man and have an even blacker daughter. When she flees her abusive marriage and heads home to Mallard, the entire town is shocked when beautiful Desiree Vignes comes back to live with her mother, with a "dark" daughter in tow. The little girl, Jude, is never accepted by the other children at school, but she finds solace in track and field. In high school she is offered a track and field scholarship to a college in California, and she sets off leaving her own mother and Mallard for good. Desiree, who was the twin who always WANTED to escape Mallard, ends up living there and working in the local diner until decades later when her mother dies. Meanwhile, Jude falls in love and to make extra money, works for a catering company that caters to the rich. She's fired from her job when she drops and shatters a bottle of wine on the floor at a posh party when the hostess of the party finally comes downstairs and Jude sees that she is the spitting image of her mother. It must be her Aunt Stella, who her mother talked of often and, mad as she was at her for leaving, longed to one day see again. Jude is fired by her boss on the spot, but is determined to see if this beautiful woman is, in fact, her aunt. If she is, then she is married to a handsome, rich white man and has her own beautiful, blonde-haired, violet-eyed, sixteen year old daughter, Kennedy, who seems quite the diva....Jude's cousin, if it's true. We finally then get Stella's story and how she lived in constant fear of being found out...so much so that when a black family tries to move into her neighborhood, she's one of the most vocal, speaking out that they can't let any of  "those" people start moving into their neighborhood. Of course, eventually the black family moves in, and Stella becomes friend with the wife, but is ashamed to be seen with her by the other women. Meanwhile, she's so closed off to her own daughter, who longs to know more about her mother, that she doesn't realize she's raising a nightmarish daughter who is going to act out  just to get her attention. When Jude finally finds Kennedy again, Kennedy has dropped out of college and is acting in a show in a local theater. Jude insinuates herself into Kennedy's life by getting a job at the theater, hoping that she'll see Stella one evening if she comes to watch Kennedy. Stella finally shows at one of Kennedy's last shows and Jude confronts her during the intermission...insisting that they are related. Stella freaks out and leaves. She can't have her husband or daughter finding out she's been lying all these years. When Jude and Kennedy have an argument a few days later, Kennedy says something very mean to Jude and Jude, in return, blurts out that Kennedy's mother is her black mother's twin sister. This sets a great journey of discovery in motion for Kennedy, who actually reacts differently than you think she might. She just wants to know if it's true and know about her mother's family. Her mother, though, keeps denying it. Kennedy goes off for a couple of years, traveling the world, trying to find herself. Panicking when she can't get a hold of Kennedy, Stella actually, desperately, heads to Mallard to see if maybe Kennedy has gone there. She has a bittersweet reunion with her own mother, who now has Alzheimer's and acts as if Stella is just home from work, as if she'd never left. The reunion between Stella and Desiree, however, is fraught with much more emotion. Angry at first, Desiree doesn't want Stella anywhere near her, but Stella begs for her forgiveness, and the sisters spend a few days completely wrapped up in each other as if they'd never been apart. Stella must leave and go back to her white life, though, and once again leaves without telling Desiree goodbye. She arrives home only to hear from Kennedy who wants to come home. Stella goes to pick up Kennedy at the airport, and as they embrace, she tells her to get in the car and she'll tell her everything she wants to know...and she does. They just agree to never tell Kennedy's father. Finally, though, Kennedy has the closeness with her mother that she'd missed all her life...and she now understands the fear her mother was living in. Jude, who is still in love with her longtime beau, is now living her dream of going to medical school. When Desiree and Stella's mother finally passes away, Desiree is free to leave Mallard for good and moves to Houston to start her own new life. This is a very moving, well written story which makes me want to investigate more of what this author has written!