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5 Terrific Adult Novels for New Parents
As a daughter who was raised in a complicated family with many secrets, I’m now a mother who is raising my own children in a blended family that comes with its own challenges. Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to stories with themes of what family means and how complex it can all be! For new parents who are fortunate enough to find a window to read when the baby naps, here are some riveting and moving novels just for you.
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Far from the Tree, by Robin Benway
This National Book Award Winner might be marketed as a young adult novel, but it’s a must-read for adults who love contemporary stories. It’s also one of my favorite books. Benway links the stories of three siblings who were separated as babies and now find each other as teens.
When Grace gives up her own baby for adoption, she decides to search for her own biological family, including her sister Maya and her brother Joaquin. Grace doesn’t understand why her siblings have no interest in finding the mother who gave them away, as this story delves into adoption, teen pregnancy, and foster care. Benway’s chapters alternate between each sibling’s voice with so much empathy, compassion, and humor. I couldn’t put this book down, and I absolutely love this tender narrative about how complicated families can be.
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A Place for Us, by Fatima Farheen Mirza
This debut, written by 27-year-old Mirza, is the first publication from Sarah Jessica Parker’s new imprint. The family saga opens with Muslim-American family on the night of their oldest daughter’s wedding. Rafiq and Layla, an immigrant couple in California, are reunited with their estranged son, Amar, who hasn’t been home in a few years.
This new tender debut about identity and belonging delves into the challenges between parents’ expectations and children’s desires, as it touches on what it means to raise a family in suburban America with non-Western values and customs. It’s a complex, beautiful novel about love, secrets, family, and freedom.
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Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, NPR, and many others, this story begins in the Richardson home in the Cleveland suburbs of Shaker Heights, where Elena Richardson, a reporter, has an entitled, predictable life with her lawyer husband and their four children.
When Mia Warren, a photographer and single mom, moves into the Richardsons’ house with her 15-year-old daughter Pearl, the mothers collide, shaking up this ordered, rule-following upper-class community. Then a baby goes missing, as issues of class, privilege, and racism surface. This is a riveting story about motherhood in contemporary America, buried secrets, and the complexities of class and race.
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Future Home of the Living God: A Novel, by Louise Erdrich
For readers who love dystopian speculative fiction, this fast-paced story opens with 26-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, the adopted daughter of an open-minded Minneapolis liberal couple. Now single and four months pregnant, Cedar feels compelled to find her native birth mother, who had her on an Ojibwe reservation. The novel takes a turn when Cedar faces a reproductive crisis, as the totalitarian regime starts to imprison pregnant women for close observation, and we learn about this brave woman fighting for her life, and what it means to be self-determined.
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Girls in Trouble, by Caroline Leavitt
Circling back to teenage pregnancy, adoption, and first love, here’s another one of my all-time favorite contemporary novels. This is a story of an open adoption gone wrong in 1987, when we meet 16-year-old Sara Rothman, who’s pregnant and alone. Enter George and Eva, a couple desperate for a child, and this complex story unfolds. Leavitt, an author I adore, has written (in her eighth novel!) an emotional, unflinching book about motherhood and love, the consequences of drastic decisions, and the importance of honesty.
What novels do you recommend to new parents?
Need more books for parents? How about 12 Novels About the Parenting Experience?