From the exceptionally gifted, Baileys Prize–nominated author Sara Taylor comes a dazzling new novel about youth, identity, and family secrets.
After a fight with Alex's father, Ma pulls Alex out of bed and onto a pilgrimage of self-discovery through her own enthralling past. Guided by a memory map of places and people from Ma's life before motherhood, the pair travels from Virginia to California, each new destination and character revealing secrets, stories, and unfinished business. As Alex's coming-of-age narrative unfolds across the continent, we meet a cast of riveting and heartwarming characters including brilliant Annie, who seeks the help of Ma and Alex to escape the patriarchal cult in which she was raised, and the tragic young Marisol, whose dreams of becoming a mother end in heartbreak.
Slowly, Alex begins to realizes that the road trip is not a string of arbitrary stops, but a journey whose destination is perhaps Ma's biggest secret of all. Told from the perspective of Alex, a teenager who equates gender identification with unwillingly choosing a side in a war, and written with a stunningly assured lyricism, The Lauras is a fearless study of identity, set against the gorgeously rendered landscape of North America.
Download and start listening now!
Be the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Sara Taylor is a socially anxious product of rural Virginia and the home-schooling movement. She traded her health for a BFA from Randolph College, and her sanity for an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. Following the MA her supervisor refused to let her leave, so she remains at the UEA to chip away at a double-focus PhD in censorship and fiction. She spends a ridiculous amount of time on delayed trains between Norwich and her husband’s house in Reading, and tends to get lost, rained on, and chased by cows with unsettling frequency. She expects the real adults will tell her to go back to finger painting any minute now.
Rudy Sanda is a versatile actor, singer, voice-over artist, and fight choreographer. He has appeared on stage and screen in the United States and England, including productions at Laguna Playhouse, Ivoryton Playhouse, and Ocean State Theatre. Rudy holds a BFA in acting from the University of Rhode Island.