When We Believed in Mermaids: a novel by Barbara O’Neal, is an emotion-packed story of a family gone awry.

The Bianci home sat high on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the township of Eden, near San Francisco. The family restaurant was right next door. It would seem idyllic, but in this home there was always tension, always underlying currents of strife.

The youngest of two daughters, Kit, becomes an ER doctor in a Santa Cruz hospital where she capably treats the results of horrible accidents. In her spare time she surfs where she can lose herself as she glides over the water. She doesn’t have to think, to remember; she can just be one with the sea. One night while watching the evening news on TV she sees coverage of a burning nightclub in Auckland, New Zealand, and thinks she sees her older sister, Josie, among the onlookers. It can’t be! Josie has been dead fifteen years, killed in a terrorist train explosion in France.

Mari is an exceptionally capable wife and mother. The family lives an opulent life in New Zealand with a beautiful home overlooking the sea. Her husband is a successful businessman, and her son and daughter are bright, well-adjusted children. Mari has a secret though and should it be revealed, the life she loves would disintegrate.

The story alternates between the two main characters, Kit and Mari, both in the same present-day time period, but with vivid and often painful flashbacks. I cringed when the children had unlimited freedom and were left to fend for themselves, I rode the waves when they surfed.. I grieved with the pain caused by reckless lives.

When We Believed in Mermaids is a gripping, engrossing story of two sisters, their relationship with each other and with the family. It’s about successful people who allow their passions to rule. It’s about lives shattered by their own excesses. It’s also about the healing effects of love and forgiveness.