mother

On this week’s 51%, we speak with author Kate Schatz about her new novel Where the Girls Were. Loosely based on her mother’s experience, Where the Girls Were tells the story of a bright teenage girl in the late 1960s who finds herself pregnant and is sent away to have the baby in secret and put it up for adoption. Schatz says secret homes for "unwed mothers" were not uncommon in the U.S. before the decision of Roe v. Wade enshrined abortion rights for (almost) the next 50 years. During the “Baby Scoop Era,” millions of unwed young mothers faced societal pressure to relinquish their newborns for adoption.

On this week’s 51%, we speak with author Kate Schatz about her new novel Where the Girls Were. Loosely based on her mother’s experience, Where the Girls Were tells the story of a bright teenage girl in the late 1960s who finds herself pregnant and is sent away to have the baby in secret and put it up for adoption. Schatz says secret homes for "unwed mothers" were not uncommon in the U.S. before the decision of Roe v. Wade enshrined abortion rights for (almost) the next 50 years. During the “Baby Scoop Era,” millions of unwed young mothers faced societal pressure to relinquish their newborns for adoption.

Laura Dave continues Hannah Hall’s journey in the sequel to her best-seller “The Last Thing He Told Me.” The latest, “The First Time I Saw Him,” explores not what someone else has hidden – but what the narrator herself may have misunderstood about the story she’s been telling herself for years.

Sam Sussman’s debut novel, “Boy From the North Country,” is a moving story of love, loss, and identity. When twenty-six-year-old Evan returns home to care for his dying mother, June, he begins to uncover long-kept secrets. Chief among them: the possibility that his father is Bob Dylan.

Jill Bialosky’s new book, "The End is the Beginning," is a moving elegy, starting with her mother’s end and the physical/cognitive decline that led her to a care home.Compounding her challenges of raising four daughters without a livelihood or partner, Iris’s life coincided with an age of unstoppable social change and reinvention, when the roles of wife and mother she was raised to inhabit ceased to be the guarantors of stability and happiness.

Poet Joy Harjo’s poems are described as musical, intimate, political and wise, intertwining ancestral memory and tribal histories with resilience and love. Her latest book, “Washing My Mother’s Body: A Ceremony for Grief,” explores the complexity of a daughter’s grief as she reflects on the joys and sorrows of her mother’s life.

When Clair Wills was in her twenties, she discovered she had a cousin she had never met. Born in a mother-and-baby home in 1950s Ireland, Mary grew up in an institution not far from the farm where Clair spent happy childhood summers. Yet Clair was never told of Mary’s existence.How could a whole family―a whole country―abandon unmarried mothers and their children, erasing them from history?Clair’s tells the story in the new book "Missing Persons: or, My Grandmother's Secrets."

“The Hills of California,” a new play by Jez Butterworth and directed by Sam Mendes, is running on Broadway at The Broadhurst Theatre through December 22. Helena Wilson is making her Broadway debut in the show - and she performed in the original production on The West End earlier this year.

Taking as inspiration his mother’s own Red Cross service, novelist Luis Alberto Urrea has delivered an overlooked story of women’s heroism in World War II. With its portrait of friendship and valor in harrowing circumstances, "Good Night, Irene," explores the "Donut Dollies," an all-women volunteer group launched by the Red Cross during WWII.

Simon and his mother, Ora, have always been close. She’s been his champion, his defender, and his friend. But when a life-changing secret comes to light, can their bond survive? 2020 WTF Foeller Fellow Tyler Thomas directs "we are continuous" - a WTF-commissioned play by Harrison David Rivers (Where Storms Are Born) that explores how people can change and how love can evolve."we are continuous" runs on the Nikos Stage August 2-14.