A woman's impression of her family is dismantled by revelations of the past in a haunting story about identity, memories, and the power of secrets by the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake.
One year after her mother's death, a woman prepares to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Digging through a trunk in the attic, looking for keepsakes for the occasion, she discovers photographs that call into question everything she believed about her life. The truth is a different story-one of a little girl in danger, a lie, and a mother's love so fierce it led her to do the unimaginable.
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Because these things happened in life, your ma had been shaving carrots in the kitchen one minute and was gone the next, and there was no bronze shoe, no silver spoon, not even a stained and sagging plush toy left behind, to prove that she had been your mother from the very start.
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(Amazon Original Stories, 27 April 2023, e-book, 37 pages, borrowed from AmazonKindle via PrimeReading)
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This is a new author for me. I thought Deluge was terrific. This story packs a novel worth of plot and character development into so little pages, quite an impressive feat. I loved the premise of the story - a woman innocently sorts through her mother's things after she dies and unwittingly stumbles across a massive skeleton in the family close. Her life will never be the same because she can't unknow the truth. This is a gripping piece of writing.