The Mother Gene

by Lynne Bryant

Overview

Dr. Miriam Stewart works tirelessly to help Appalachian women gain control over their bodies-to make a deliberate decision whether to be a mother. Bone-weary, but with a nagging fear of the obsolescence of retirement, Miriam is sandwiched between two frustratingly independent women; neither will listen to her advice. Her aging mother, Lillian, a locally beloved, retired mountain midwife, refuses to leave her farmhouse nestled deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Olivia, her thirty-year-old daughter, searches for the perfect sperm donor for the baby she's determined to have.

When a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity promises her work legacy will continue, Miriam's passion is renewed. But her carefully ordered world explodes when the fulfillment of her dream collides with her mother's long-kept secrets. Secrets that undermine the very foundation of Miriam's beliefs about who she is, her career, and especially, what it means to mother. Miriam is faced with an impossible choice.

In The Mother Gene, Lynne Bryant casts a contemporary story of mothers and daughters against the backdrop of a not-so-distant dark time in American history, when powerful forces sought to control who should have children. Three generations of women struggle with the intertwined choices of sex, love, pregnancy, and motherhood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781639886838
Publisher:	Atmosphere Press
Publication date:	03/08/2023
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.74(d)

Editorial Reviews

02/06/2023

Gynecologist Miriam Stewart has dedicated her career to helping poor women in the “hollers” of western Virginia, where she herself grew up, make good reproductive choices. Now 65, at the brink of “retirement … old age … obsolescence,” she faces the increased needs of her octogenarian mother, Lillian, still living on her own although becoming more fragile. At the same time, Miriam’s lesbian daughter, Olivia, is exploring the possibility of motherhood through insemination, and Miriam’s on-again, off-again romantic partner—Olivia’s biological father—announces his return to her life. Then, on the eve of leaving her practice, she lands a multi-million-dollar grant that will enable her to build the women’s medical center she has long dreamed about. A revelation of disturbing family secrets, however, calls into question her career choices.

The ambitious cross-generational novel addresses compelling social issues such as class, health care, and women’s reproductive rights without taking a heavy-handed approach. Bryant's empathy and understanding shines throughout, a uniting perspective that helps unite some at-times disparate storylines. The Mother Gene employs three points of view—Miriam, Lillian, and Olivia—to good effect as it explores the theme of what it means to be a mother. A multi-timeline novel, the story hops from the present in 2010, back to Miriam’s early career in the 1970s, and then further back to her mother’s life during the Depression and World War II. Early on, these time shifts can feel jarring and too frequent, and what particular flashbacks are intended to illuminate is not always clear.

Bryant rewards reader patience, though, as midway through, when the characters are more fleshed-out, the strands weave together, and the narrative flows with purpose and power. Some readers may guess at aspects of Miriam’s family secret early on, and the revelation itself is somewhat drawn out. But when it finally arrives, the full truth about Lillian and Miriam’s past delivers an emotional punch thanks to Bryant’s perceptive, humane characterization and abiding sense of what matters most.

Takeaway: A gynecologist questions the choices she made in her life in this humane novel of family and secrets.

Great for fans of: Diane Chamberlain, Jodi Picoult

Production grades Cover: B+ Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A

BookLife Reviews