FRAN HAWTHORNE
Her Daughter
I’m only telling you in case the police contact you. Esme was arrested, but I’m handling everything, and she doesn’t want to hear from you.
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That email from her ex-husband is almost the only information Alice Wilson has had about her 23-year-old daughter, Esme, in the six years since Esme abruptly ended all communication.
As Alice, an environmental activist, scrambles to learn why Esme was arrested and what might happen next, she inevitably also retraces the past. Her obsessive search up and down the California coast antagonizes her friends and jeopardizes her job. But none of that matters to Alice, as she uncovers hints of a daughter she’d never known—and of her then-husband’s role in their estrangement, even while they were married:
Why did Esme become bulimic in college?
Who is the Robert Corning who was arrested with Esme and why did she pay his bail?
Why is she continuing to push Alice away, yet still chummy with her father?
Most important: Will Esme agree to meet with Alice? And if she does, will Alice say the wrong thing—whatever that wrong thing is?
"Hawthorne gives us brilliantly alive characters who wrestle with what we owe our children when they grow up, and what they might owe us. About parenthood, love, the mystery of estrangement and hope of reconciliation, this novel is a stunner" —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times best-selling author of Pictures of You and Days of Wonder
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"In the wake of an acrimonious divorce, Alice becomes estranged from her daughter, Esme, and grows increasingly desperate to reconnect, risking her career and friendships as she puzzles together why Esme refuses to see her. Part mystery, part family drama, Her Daughter is a poignant, page-turning, emotional read" —Jennifer Rosner, award winning author of The Yellow Bird Sings and Once We Were Home
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"To read Her Daughter is to explore the relentless pain and self-doubt of a mother’s estrangement from her only child, especially as the father’s vengeful lies keep blocking every pathway to connection. In her poignant, honest depiction of what it takes to persevere, Fran Hawthorne takes us deep into the beauty and strength of human attachment" —Mary Ann McGuigan, National Book Award finalist (1997) and author of That Very Place