The Lauras

The Lauras

<i>I didn’t realise my mother was a person until I was thirteen years old and she pulled me out of bed, put me in the back of her car, and we left home and my dad with no explanations. I thought that Ma was all that she was and all that she had ever wanted to be. I was wrong.</i> <p> <i>As we made our way from Virginia to California, returning to the places where she’d lived as a child in foster care and as a teenager on the run, repaying debts and keeping promises, I learned who she was in her life-before-me and the secrets she had kept – even from herself. But when life on the road began to feel normal I couldn’t forget the home we’d left behind, couldn’t deny that, just like my mother, I too had unfinished business. </i> </p> <p>This enigmatic pilgrimage takes them back to various stages of Alex’s mother’s life, each new state prompting stories and secrets. Together they trace back through a life of struggle and adventure to put to rest unfinished business, to heal old wounds and to search out lost friends. This is an extraordinary story of a life; a stunning exploration of identity and an authentic study of the relationship between a mother and her child.</p> <p> <i>The Lauras</i> is the new novel from the exceptionally gifted author of <i>The Shore</i>, which was long listed for the Baileys Women’s Fiction Prize and shortlisted for the <i>Guardian</i> First Book Award and the <i>Sunday Times</i> Young Writer of the Year.</p>