Fiction and fact about longing for love: A gripping novel based on the author of 'The Velveteen Rabbit' and her daughter echoes the beloved children's book.

"The Velveteen Daughter" is that rare form of novel that blends the distinction between fiction and biography. It is all the more unique in that it subtly exploits the theme of another piece of fiction.

Laurel Davis Huber draws the aching truth of her novel out of the facts of the lives of Margery Williams and Pamela Bianco. Williams wrote the beloved children's story, "The Velveteen Rabbit." Bianco was Williams' daughter, who became a global sensation for her works of art at age 11. Based on extensive research, "The Velveteen Daughter" is a virtuoso performance that pulls you into their crippling, intertwined lives with a sense of fidelity, and won't let you go until the last page.

Huber, who lives in Maine and New Jersey, describes in her book's endnotes that "discovering and collecting the various pieces of the puzzle that eventually arranged themselves into 'The Velveteen Daughter' was a wonderful obsession."

To her knowledge, the story has never before come to light, nor has a biography of Williams ever been published. And Pamela Bianco, she writes, "has been forgotten almost entirely."

Refracted echoes of "The Velveteen Rabbit" resonate throughout Huber's story. Generations...