When Erica gets a phone call to say her mother, Ione, is ill in St Lucia, she knows she must go to her. Though the island - the place of her mother's birth - is somewhere that Erica has never seen as her homeland.
Even when the plane touches down in the tropical paradise, with its palm trees swaying in the island breeze, the sound of accents so like her mother's own calling loud in the air, Erica doesn't find herself wanting to stay a moment longer than she has to.
Even when the plane touches down in the tropical paradise, with its palm trees swaying in the island breeze, the sound of accents so like her mother's own calling loud in the air, Erica doesn't find herself wanting to stay a moment longer than she has to.
What she doesn't know is that - even as her mother's memories get worse - Ione still has a final gift for her daughter. Because the unspoken secrets of their past are about to emerge, changing everything Erica thought she knew about her mother, her home, and who she really is...
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The warmth and dazzle from the sun hit me.- CHAPTER ONE
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(Bookouture, 22 March 2022, e-book, 292 pages, borrow from AmazonKindle via Prime Reading)
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I've read other books by the author so was looking forward to My Mother's Gift. My gran had senile dementia so I wondered how this would be tackled in the book. Erica narrates the book in the first person. This offers a powerful way to explore her feelings and reactions to her mother's ailing condition. The narration is spot on. I felt really in Erica's head. Her reactions to her mother; taking her confusion and words personally, feeling stressed, losing her temper and drowning in hopelessness are spot on. I really connected with this book.
