Two Daughters Rode In. Neither Was Mine: What the Story Is Really About

Two Daughters Rode In. Neither Was Mine does not waste time on a gentle setup. The premise is the plot.

At Kentucky horse king Hank's sixty-second birthday banquet, a white horse knocked over a flower stand, and a mud-covered woman publicly claimed him as her father — claiming to be Tess, the daughter who had been missing for three years. But the DNA test Hank secretly had done showed that neither the woman who had burst in nor the one at home was his daughter.

The real Tess had been put in a sack and sunk in the river by her son-in-law Wade three years earlier, then set free by a boatman and rescued by an elderly couple by the river. She had hidden for three years and woven a net: letting the stand-in Nell go home to protect her father, spreading word that a will was about to be made, forcing Wade to push out the plastic-surgery impostor, asking three questions in public at the signing banquet, the real daughter riding home, and the boatman testifying in court.

That is the spine of Two Daughters Rode In. Neither Was Mine: the people in the synopsis do not get to pretend the story started somewhere else.