Dan Mora, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bolivia, is missing. Will Jamie Morgan find him before it is too late? Oblivia introduces the reader to Dan Mora and Jamie Morgan, Peace Corps volunteers in Bolivia. At a crossroad in their lives, they discover the power of making a difference. Yet when Dan disappears, and Jamie is given the task of finding him, she discovers that nothing is ever as it seems in a country she and Dan have grown to love, a place they call Oblivia.

It s March 15, 1975, and Rosa Rodriguez has just given birth to a premature baby girl, Angelica. Desperate to escape the abusive husband whose beating brought on early labor, Rosa flees Los Angeles to live with her cousin Silvia in San Francisco, but not before conducting a search through the hospital for her daughter s gemela del alma, the child born the same day and time as Angelica. Rosa, an astrologer, believes this child s life will mirror Angelica s, and when she casts her daughter s chart, she is convinced she must find Angelica s cosmic twin because their destinies are complicated. Eighteen years later, it s June, 1993, and Stephanie Bengochea and Jazmin Valdez, best friends since age five, share everything: the same birthday, March 15, 1975, the same appearance, and the same best male friend, Pedro Garcia. After Jaz and Steph graduate from high school, they leave their hometown of Pleasant Valley to attend different colleges, only to discover their paths inexplicably parallel one another s. Yet when both become pregnant the night of their twentieth birthday, free will takes over. Jaz decides to keep her child when her college boyfriend, Martin Donahue, the third, proposes, while Steph breaks up with hers after aborting their child. Steph moves home to help with her family s restaurant because her mother is injured, and when she marries Pedro it shatters Jaz and Steph s sense of sisterhood and pushes the once inseparable friends apart. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Rosa believes her prayers are answered when she meets Jaz. Thanks to a friend in the SFPD, Rosa knows a young woman named Stephanie Bengochea shares Angelica s birthday, so imagine her surprise when she discovers the young mother across the street is Steph s friend and shares Steph s birthday. Beware the Ides of March, Rosa decides, as she trades daycare with Jaz in exchange for organization of her computer-based business astrology firm called Millennial Fears. The Y2K has the superstitious dotcom crowd in San Francisco logging on for advice, and while Jaz and Rosa refuse to succumb to the dread that plagues their customers, they learn that life can t be plotted out, that the tension between belief and superstition, faith and knowledge, friendship and love, are what will allow them to discover what their destinies should be.

Is it ever better to lie than to tell the truth?
"BACK TO NORMAL," set in the early '90s in the eastern Sierra, is divided into three parts. In part one the reader meets Sue and Chris Beauchamp, married twenty years and the parents of three children. When their oldest daughter, Michelle, is injured in an accident while driving home from college for Christmas, hard decisions have to be made. A blizzard rages outside the small hospital in the Beauchamp's mountain town, and Michelle needs a blood transfusion. The parents are asked to donate which reveals a secret: Michelle is not Chris Beauchamp's biological daughter. Sue contacts the biological father, John Sadek, a friend and neighbor. He donates which saves Michelle's life but causes Sue to lose her own. In the aftermath Chris leaves and takes his sons with him, John pressures Sue to tell Michelle that he is her real father, and Sue tries to protect Michelle until she recovers, only to have her daughter learn the truth and run away.
Part two allows the reader to travel back twenty years as Sue, Chris, and John come to the eastern Sierra after college to work. A tangled web of love and friendship leaves Sue heartbroken when John and Chris's former girlfriend, Karen, go off to Boston for grad school. Sue follows Chris to UC Berkeley where they fall in love and marry. The following summer, they return to Pleasant Valley, only to have John and Karen return as well. John tempts Sue, and when she succumbs to an overture she immediately regrets it, but it is too late. She is pregnant and must decide whether to abort or tell Chris that the child may not be his. With her mother and sister's support, Sue keeps her baby and her secret from Chris, but after Michelle is born, a blood test confirms Sue's worst fears. Convinced that if she becomes the perfect wife and mother, the only truth that will matter is her love for Chris and Michelle, Sue decides to keep her secret.
Part three follows Sue as she attempts to repair the damage of the lie. First, she must find her daughter and explain her decision. Then she must win back Chris's love and trust. Finally, she must heal the damage done to John and Karen Sadek's marriage, for while they have publicly stated they do not want children they are actually unable to conceive. It makes John desire for a relationship with Michelle all the more poignant, though Sue knows she must convince him to wait until Michelle and Chris's relationship has had a chance to heal. As Sue strives to reunite her family, "BACK TO NORMAL" is brought to a realistic yet satisfying conclusion.