Description

Tender and unsparing this is a novel to hold ontoCrystal Hana Kim author of If You Leave Me

A novel about family secrets and a volatile relationship between a mother and her daughters

When Annas sister calls with an urgent message Anna doesnt return the call She knows its about their mother

Growing up in an Italian American family in workingclass Boston Anna lives a simple but comfortable childhoodfilled with homemade meals and frontporch gatherings in a closeknit neighborhood She and her sisters are devoted to their mother orbiting her like the sun trying to keep up with her loving but mercurial nature When their father gets a new job outside the city the family is tossed unceremoniously into a middleclass suburban existence Annas mother is suddenly adrift and the darkness lurking inside her ignites Her daughters isolated and trapped with her in their new house do everything they can to keep her from unraveling

Alternating between Annas childhood and her twenties when she receives a shattering call about her mother that threatens to blow up her precariously constructed life in New York Mother in the Dark asks whether we can ever return home when the idea of home is fraught with instability This story about sisterhood the complications of class and the chains of inheritance between mothers and daughters delivers an unvarnished portrayal of the fragile horrors of domestic life and a young woman consumed by her past