The Vanishing Half: A Novel

Stella begins life as the soft-spoken, studious twin. Always overshadowed by Desiree, Stella craves a life apart from her sister. When she realizes how easy it is to pass for White, she creates a new identity for herself. After marrying her former boss, she becomes the pampered wife of a rich man in Brentwood, California.

To preserve her privileged life, Stella must continuously lie to her husband and daughter. She feels emotionally detached from her birth family but, after her daughter, Kennedy, learns the truth about her background, she goes back to Mallard one time to plead with Desiree to keep Jude away from Kennedy. In her later years, Stella fulfills her dream of completing her education and becomes a college professor. Her husband never learns her secret, and her daughter agrees to keep quiet about her mother’s past. Throughout the book, Stella’s identity remains as much a mystery to her as to others. Her career in academia marks the fulfilment of a longstanding desire to teach, and as such, it may be the one authentic aspect of a life otherwise marked by lies.

Jude is Desiree’s dark-skinned daughter. She is treated like an outcast among the light-skinned residents of Mallard and grows up self-conscious about her appearance. By the time she flees to Los Angeles for college, she has internalized the belief that her dark skin makes her unattractive. In college, Jude meets transsexual Reese and forms a mutually nurturing relationship with him. With Reese and his group of friends, who have their own experiences of being treated like outcasts, Jude finds acceptance.

Jude has long known her mother has a twin sister, and while working at a retirement party in California, she sees a woman she believes to be Stella. After a chance encounter with her cousin, Kennedy, a few years later, she strikes up a friendship with Kennedy, and she later confronts Stella and then Kennedy about their family connection. The cousins communicate for years without telling their mothers.

Early is a bounty hunter who is hired by Sam to find Desiree but ends up falling in love with her. Early and Desiree met as teenagers, when Early was delivering groceries and brought Desiree gifts. When they were younger, Adele warned Desiree to stay away from this dark-skinned boy who came from a sharecropper family. After the romance broke up, the pair didn’t see each other for 14 years.

When Desiree returns to Mallard, they rekindle their romance. Whenever Early isn’t on the road working a job, he returns to Desiree’s house in Mallard to be with her. Even though Adele treats him like a hired hand, he is devoted to Desiree. Early never succeeds in finding Stella, but Jude does. 

Blake is a successful marketing executive who comes from a wealthy family. After Stella is hired as his secretary, he falls in love with her and proposes. They move to California and have a daughter. Blake feels mildly threatened by Stella’s academic career, but he eventually supports her ambitions. During the decades of their marriage, he never suspects that his wife is Black. After their daughter, Kennedy, learns the truth, she agrees never to tell her father.