Mothers of Fate
A Novel
by Lynne Hugo
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Pub Date Apr 22 2025 | Archive Date Apr 16 2025
Amphorae Publishing Group, LLC | Blank Slate Press
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Description
"Secrets emerge, relationships fracture, but out of the wreckage, Hugo has built a moving, extraordinary story of hope. I loved it." -- Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Days of Wonder
Deana Wilkes, who's needed braces to walk since a disabling accident long ago, seeks out Monica Connell, an attorney, to find the child she was forced to relinquish in a closed adoption thirty years ago. Back then, Deana believed that the passion between her and Tony, her married boss, meant they were destined for each other. It was wrong, Deana knew, but believed it was also meant to be. Tony's long gone now, and Deana's constructed a life out of the wreck of their affair. She's ready to finally make things right and meet her son.
But Monica's wife, Angela, was adopted herself after an early history of abandonment and foster homes. Devoted to the memory of her parents, she's certain that closed adoptions need to remain closed unless the adoptee seeks contact. She draws a red line: Monica cannot take the case. Monica, though, feels compelled to help Deana by her own complicated history, one she's never revealed to Angela. As this wedge between them hardens, will Angie or Monica have the best custody claim to their own beloved adopted baby?
Nobody knows what Deana's son wants, including his adoptive parents. Not even redheaded Suzanne, and the possibility of love. After all, as an Iraq war vet and a long-distance truck driver, Daniel knows everything about hitting the road to avoid the confusion that's plagued his life.
Lynne Hugo's thirteenth novel takes on the reverberating effects of sexual power dynamics in the workplace and vividly portrays lingering psychological wounds as characters struggle to reconcile self-determination with the sacrifices love demands.
A Note From the Publisher
Other contributors: Lisa Miller
eBook: 9781943075928
Illustrated by Kristy Makansi
Other contributors: Lisa Miller
eBook: 9781943075928
Advance Praise
“With her usual engaging prose, Lynne Hugo unspools a tender tale of parenthood in all its many faces as her characters struggle to live with the outcome of their past decisions. Those past choices color the present in bold strokes, raising the stakes to keep the pages turning. Hugo’s compassion for her characters—and her readers--shines through.”
—Diane Chamberlain, New York Times bestselling author of The Last House on the Street
“Lynne Hugo’s brilliantly prismatic story is about choice versus destiny, forgiveness versus acceptance, all told through the lens of a heartbreaking adult adoptee, his adoptive parents, his birth mother who is now desperate to contact her son, and the attorney she hires who is part of a Lesbian couple with an adopted bi-racial child. Secrets emerge, relationships fracture, but out of the wreckage, Hugo has built a moving, extraordinary story of hope. I loved it.”
—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Days of Wonder
“Lynne Hugo, a writer of immense talent and rare insight, dips her sharp yet sympathetic pen in a well of revelation as she brings each character to life. I cared and worried about all of them, despite their transgressions, rooting for them to find their path [...]Mothers of Fate places self-determination on the stand.”
—Randy Susan Meyers, internationally bestselling author
“In MOTHERS OF FATE, Hugo explores, from many angles, the often beautiful, sometimes difficult, and always complex relationships surrounding any adoption—relationships with those you love the most and with those that you have never met."
—Jeff Hoffmann, author of Like It Never Happened and Other People's Children
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781943075911 |
| PRICE | $18.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 305 |
Links
Featured Reviews
Susan R, Reviewer
I have read most of Lynne Hugo's books and she just keeps getting better. Her new book is a story about adoption and how it effects the birth mothers, the adoptive mothers and most importantly the child that has been adopted.
Deanna is an older handicapped woman who fell in love with her boss years before and then had his baby. Due to a catastrophic event, he never knew that she was pregnant and when she realized that she couldn't support her son on her own, she reluctantly gave him up for adoption. Now 30 years later, she wants to meet her son. It was a closed adoption so she went to a lawyer to get help finding him. Monica works by herself due to issues with the firm she worked with when she got of school. She and her wife, Angela, a social worker, have recently adopted a young girl. Angela had been abandoned as a child and lived in a series of foster homes. She believes that closed adoptions should remain closed and urges Monica not to take Deanna's case but Monica feels very strongly about it and decides to help Deanna even though it causes a huge disruption in her marriage. This is the basic part of the story but there is so much more -- all of these characters have a lot of baggage in their pasts that is impeding their current lives.
The story hops back and forth between several people and several time lines. We get Deanna's story of her love affair and the birth and adoption of her son in the early 80s, Monica's background at the law firm she worked at, Angela's problems with her birth family, the early years of Daniel's adoption told by Daniel and his adoptive parents both in the past and present. The story is told in alternating chapters by all of these people. With some authors, it could have been very confusing to jump time periods and different people telling their story but Lynne Hugo does a fantastic writing job of melding all of the characters together so that there is no confusion and the story flows smoothly.
This is an emotional character-driven story with characters who want to make the right decisions in their lives without hurting others. The characters are all dealing with past mistakes and trying to move forward without sacrificing the people that they love. This is a fantastic story with characters I won't soon forget.
Readers who liked this book also liked:
Jodi Picoult; Jennifer Finney Boylan
General Fiction (Adult), Literary Fiction, Women's Fiction
