Jesse and Ramon are a loving couple, but after years spent
unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, they turn to adoption, relieved to think
that once they navigate the bureaucratic path to parent-hood they will have a
happy ending. But nothing has prepared them for the labyrinthine process, for
the many training sessions and approvals; for the constant advice from friends,
strangers, and “experts”; for the birthmothers who contact them but don’t
ultimately choose them; or even, most shockingly, for the women who call
claiming they’ve chosen Jesse and Ramon but who turn out never to have been
pregnant in the first place.
Jennifer Gilmore’s eloquence about the human heart, its
frailties and complexities, and her razor-sharp observations about race, class,
culture, and changing family dynamics are spectacularly combined in this
powerful novel. Suffused with passion and fury, The Mothers is a taut,
gripping, and satisfying book that will stay with readers long after they turn
the last page.
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“I couldn’t stop reading it—it had the harrowing qualities of a psychological thriller, the comedy of a familiar Jewish family, and was alternately hysterically funny and heartbreaking. It is down to the bone stripped-bare honest.”
—
A.M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven