All posts tagged: mothers and children

Essential Reading? I think THE YELLOW HOUSE by Sarah M. Broom just might be. Displacement, rootedness, home and more in her astonishing story of survival

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By Leslie Lindsay  ~WEDNESDAYS WITH WRITERS| ALWAYS WITH A BOOK: SPOTLIGHT~ 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER 2019 JOHN LEONARD AWARD FOR BEST FIRST BOOK RECIPIENT & NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER I read THE YELLOW HOUSE (Grove/Atlantic, August 2019) with an eye toward memoir and a personal connection to one’s home, but this book is so much more than a memoir. It’s an examination of race and class, about the pull of home and family, and destruction. Set in a neglected area of New Orleans, the Yellow House was never much of a house in the first place–even before Katrina. But that’s not the point. In 1961, Sarah’s mother, Ivory Mae was a determined 19-year old widow. She invests her savings and little inheritance from her first husband into a little shotgun house in a once-promising neighborhood. She meets another man–Simon Broom–who will become the father of the author–but not for many years–and then he, too dies just six months after she is born. Broom takes the tale of this home and interweaves it with narrative …

Carol Goodman on her new Gothic thriller, THE OTHER MOTHER, about postpartum psychosis & more

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By Leslie Lindsay  THE OTHER MOTHER…a creepy Gothic thriller about motherhood and madness with plenty of twists. Plus, she talks about her fascination with the changeling story, her research into mental illness, and those creepy abandoned hospitals, being a Latin major (?!) and so much more Carol Goodman hooked me years ago with her debut, THE LAKE OF DEAD LANGUAGES, about a girls’ boarding school and the unsavory things going on there. And then I was mesmerized by THE GHOST ORCHID and still have images from that book lodged in my mind. So when THE OTHER MOTHER (William Morrow, March 27 2018) came to my attention, I knew I had to read it. This one is all about postpartum psychosis, but there’s more–it’s about identity (mistaken, stolen?), motherhood, trust, love, and so much more. What Goodman excels at here (and perhaps in all her writing) is her ability to create atmosphere. Imagine a milk-white sky, toss in an old stone home with a tower set on a hill overlooking a mental institution, add a mother …

WeekEND Reading: Internationally bestselling U.K. Author Clare Mackintosh is back with her third psychological suspense/crime novel, LET ME LIE and it will most definitely keep you guessing

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By Leslie Lindsay I’m so excited to share with you LET ME LIE (Berkley, March 13 2018), the next work of psychological suspense from New York Times and internationally bestselling author of I LET YOU GO and I SEE YOU. Have you read either of them?  I was absolutely gobsmacked by the cliff-hanger ending of I LET YOU GO and the cat-and-mouse intensity of I SEE YOU had me on the edge-of-my-seat. She’s back with her third tale of psychological intrigue and I promise, it will keep you guessing.  “The police say it was suicide. Anna says it was murder. They’re both wrong.” Before turning to writing, Mackintosh is a police investigator for twelve years and it most definitely shows in her writing. There’s plenty of real-life procedural jargon and action, but it’s more than that, too. Last year, Tom and Caroline Johnson chose to end their lives, one seemingly unable to live without the other. Their daughter, Anna, is struggling to come to terms with her parents’ deaths, unwilling to accept the verdict of …

Wednesdays with Writers: She’s back with a darker and more mysterious tale of families and motherhood with THE FAMILY NEXT DOOR. Join me and Sally Hepworth as we chat about the ‘magical power of hair,’ working from the library, the serious side of mothering in the form postpartum mood disorders, and the predictability of the suburbs

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By Leslie Lindsay Searing secrets…riveting revelations, Sally Hepworth’s fourth book of domestic fiction, THE FAMILY NEXT DOOR (March 6 2018, St. Martin’s Press), is a jaw-dropping gut-punch.  This suburban-set story centers on the folks of Pleasant Court, where everything is picture-perfect, at least from the outside. We start the story with Essie, three years ago, when she did a horrible thing just following the birth of her first baby. She’s gotten help and has pretty much put that incident behind her. But over on Pleasant Court, where Essie moves with her preschool daughter and hottie hubby, and new baby, she can’t help but feel a bit untethered. Her mother, Barbara, the quintessential grandmother moves in just doors away and helps with the little girls. We meet Ange and her boys, her suspicion that the photography client is perhaps a little ‘more’ to her husband than ‘just a client;’ and Fran…her obsessive running. Just what is she running from? And then we meet Isabelle, childless and single and new to the neighborhood. Who is she and why is she there?  Questions and …

Wednesdays with Writers: Janelle Brown on salty snacks and trashy magazines, writing everyday while her kids are at school; identity, the dark side of motherhood, how the ending of WATCH ME DISAPPEAR was changed three times, & so much more

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By Leslie Lindsay  Tantalizing and twisty, this literary suspense is a clever meditation on what it means to be a family, to really know someone.  Billie (Sybilla) Flanagan, a beautiful, charismatic Berkeley mom goes on a solo hike in the Desolation Wilderness never to return. It’s been a year and…where is she? Picking up the pieces are her husband and 16 year-old daughter, Olive who are seeking a death certificate as she is now presumed dead (all that’s found of her is a lone hiking boot). Olive and Jonathan do the best they can, but they are shattered, confused, broken. Jonathan is a writer attempting a loving memoir about his wife and death, Olive attends a prestigious all-girls prep school. But then Olive starts having visions/hallucinations/waking dreams of her mother. Jonathan’s concerned about her emotional stability and schleps her to doctors trying to find the source of the problem. But secrets from Billie’s past surface, leading both Jonathan and Olive the person they once shared a life with.  Together–and somewhat reluctantly–Jonathan and Olive embark on a quest to discover …