Good Mothers Don't

It's 1960, and Elizabeth has a good life. A husband who takes care of her, two healthy children, a farm in the Forties Settlement. But Elizabeth is slowly coming apart, her reality splintering. She knows she will harm her children, wants to harm her children, wants to be stopped from harming her children. She doesn't sleep, becomes incoherent. Elizabeth is taken away.

We rejoin her in 1975, "well" once again, living in a group home and desperately trying to fill in the enormous gaps electric shock therapy has left in her memory. She remembers five words from her past and knows they are significant, but their meaning is slippery and she can't grasp more. She knows that Jewel and Jacob are her children, though she can't picture their faces, and more than anything, she longs to find them and explain that she never meant to leave for so long.

Shifting through time and points of view, acclaimed author Laura Best's first novel for adults allows us to see the ripple effects of mental illness and its treatment in the mid-twentieth century. Good Mothers Don't is a moving exploration of illness, memory, and how we fight for who we love.


Genre: Literary Fiction

"Laura Best's remarkable talent radiates from every page of this novel, the story of Elizabeth and her journey to reclaim herself and her family after a long sickness. This is a riveting exploration of mental illness and the devastation it brings to the lives of women, children and the poor. Told through a chorus of voices, Best weaves a hypnotically beautiful and intimate narrative, capturing the anguish and joy in the everyday, and the otherworldly. An unlikely page turner replete with hushed surprises, unexpected crescendos, endless love and boundless vitality." - Christy Ann Conlin