' The Mothers has stayed with me since I first read it the words and the intimacy of the prose
seeping into my pores' Roxanne Gay It's the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner
a rebellious grief-stricken seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother's recent
suicide she takes up with the local pastor's son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one a former
football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young it's
not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance - and the subsequent
cover-up - will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. As Nadia hides her secret from
everyone including Aubrey her God-fearing best friend the years move quickly. Soon Nadia
Luke and Aubrey are full-fledged adults and still living in debt to the choices they made that
one seaside summer caught in a love triangle they must carefully manoeuvre and dogged by the
constant nagging question: what if they had chosen differently? In entrancing lyrical prose
The Mothers asks whether a 'what if' can be more powerful than an experience itself.
