What a great book - ( )

This book has just enough character development and plot twists for my taste. It was a bit slow in the beginning and it was a bit disconcerting to be alternating between Grace as a young mother in the late 1950s and Beth as a new mother who battled infertility in the mid-1990s. The story evens out after the first quarter and is nicely paced from there on through resulting in an enjoyable read. Grace and Beth suffer from post-partum depression which is eloquently described by letters that Grace writes to herself in an attempt as catharsis. The letters are almost too eloquent and too close to “textbook perfect” to be realistic. The letters sound as if they are written based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) for psychiatric illness. The author did her homework in terms of capturing the nuances of depression and dementia – she mentions the DSM later in the book. I am a Gerontological Clinical Nurse Specialist with expertise in dementia and the framing of Patrick’s dementia is very realistic, as is the family’s response to it. I am also the eldest of four children, all born within four and a half years, to appreciate the accuracy of the sibling interactions in the early years and how these manifest in later years.

Anyone interested in sibling interaction and the growth of family across generations will enjoy this book.

I received a free advance copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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New mom Beth, was having a hard time with motherhood and at the same time dealing with the fact that her father was dying. She decided to help clean the father's house. Finding notes that she knew were in her mother's handwriting, a mother that had died when she was very little and only had a few memories of the women and the love they shared.
When Grace was a new mother she struggled each and every time she had a child, having 4 children under 5 years old was not an easy thing for her to deal with. In her generation it was so difficult for people to understand how child birth and motherhood affected a woman's mental state. Writing notes to herself was about the only way she felt she could express how she was truly feeling. Scared her husband would fine them she hit them from the world.

Very poignant story especially in today's world. A look into the past that shows us just how much the body and the mind can be effected. Even though the back-and-forth between decades is usually not something I enjoy, reading this one had a very distinct message with each passing note. Time mirrored mother and daughter. It was sad in parts and I could feel each character's point of view in a way. ( )

While I found this story very touching the back and forth just doesn't cut it for me. I id enjoy this story and can fully understand the problems with postpartum depression and the way it was brought about in this book made it very clear just how desperate some woman can get when faced with this situation. I was sadden when it was revealed that Grace died during the illegal abortion and just how much in this day and age having Roe v Wade overturned women will now go to with unwanted pregnancies. ( )

This book was fantastic! Told in dual timelines, we see the four children in the Walsh family coming together as their father needs to be moved into a memory care facility. The relationships between the four adult children were fantastic, at times warm, at others troubled, and wonderfully real. Beth, the youngest, has recently had her first child, and is struggling, though she doesn’t initially recognize why. She agrees to take on the ask of cleaning out their father’s house and finds clues to what may have happened to their mother decades before—and it may not have been what they were always told.

In the second timeline, we hear from Grace and her sister. Sometimes I struggle with flashbacks in novels, particularly when they take up a huge chunk of the narrative, but this one was FANTASTIC and gave a detailed, bleak look at what life was like for women back in a time where they had little agency. When Grace finds herself with four children under the age of four, an alcoholic husband, no money, and crushing postpartum depression, she receives no support. Doctors tell her to buck up. Her family does nothing to help because they do not approve of the marriage. She finds herself pregnant for a fifth time and facing the prospect of a fifth child under the age of five, coniders the terrible option of getting an illegal abortion by an unlicensed person claiming to be a doctor.

What struck me so hard was how the women in this story suffered so much. They had few resources, no way out. The author did a wonderful job of presenting the bleakness of their situation. All of the Walsh children revered their father and considered him a wonderful man and had only perfect memories of how he’d raised them. They were too young to remember the terrible neglect of their early years described in the flashbacks. It was just incredibly well written and devastating and made me grateful that the story in present day could turn out differently.

Trigger Warnings: child neglect, postpartum depression, alcoholism, dementia

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader.
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