Real Mothers, and The Underside of Joy

I have this totally irrational fear of someone taking my kids away.  This fear is totally unfounded--I should just point that out now.  But there are those stories you hear where the system seems to get it wrong.  There are tearful kids and parents and a real sense of injustice, while so many kids suffer in less than ideal conditions.  That's where my irrational fear kicks in.

As I began reading Sere Prince Halverson's novel The Underside of Joy, I started to get that itchy, paranoid feeling in the opening pages.  Ella Beene suddenly loses her husband in the opening pages (so I'm not giving anything away!) and struggles through that loss alongside her two children.  Then out of nowhere, her husband's first wife pops into the picture.  Did I mention that she is the biological mother to Ella's two children?

While my irrational fear radar spotted this conflict early on, the novel was surprisingly fresh.  Halverson deftly handled the idea of motherhood and the questions of what defines it.  As Ella struggles to answer these questions to herself, her children, and, ultimately, the courts, I had to really think about how I perceive and qualify parenting and motherhood.  Halverson, again, handled this in ways that did not feel tired or overwrought.

The writing itself was lovely and I was hooked into the story and its beautiful setting.  You know you're reading something good when you have two small children and still manage to finish a novel in 24 hours.

If you want to read more about the novel or see what people are saying about it, you can check BlogHer's Book Club out HERE.

This post was sponsored by BlogHer Book Club, but the opinions and words expressed are solely my own.