All My Mother's Lovers

Book excerpt: One of . . . Electric Literature’s "Most Anticipated Debuts of Early 2020" • O Magazine’s "31 LGBTQ Books That'll Change the Literary Landscape in 2020" • Publisher Weekly’s "Spring 2020 Literary Fiction Announcements" • Buzzfeed's "Most Highly Anticipated Books Of 2020" • The Millions's "Most Anticipated: The Great First-Half 2020 Book Preview" • The Rumpus's "What to Read When 2020 is Just Around the Corner" • LGBTQ Reads's "2020 LGBTQAP Adult Fiction Preview: January-June" • Lit Hub’s "Most Anticipated Books of 2020" • BookRiot’s "Must-Read Debut Novels of 2020" • Bitch’s "27 Novels Feminists Should Read in 2020" • Harper’s Bazaar's "14 LGBTQ+ Books to Look For in 2020" • NewNowNext’s "11 Queer Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Spring" • Cosmopolitan's "12 Books You'll Be Dying to Read This Summer" • Salon’s "The Best and Boldest New Must-Read Books for May" • Lambda Literary’s “Most Anticipated LGBTQ Books of May 2020” • The Rumpus "What to Read When You Want to Celebrate Mothers" "A queer tour-de-force . . . Compelling and astonishing."–Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things Unfolding over the course of nine days, and written with enormous heart, All My Mother's Lovers is a meditation on the universality and particularity of family ties, grief, and generational divides, as well as a tender and biting portrait of sex, gender, and identity. After Maggie Krause’s mother dies suddenly in a car crash, Maggie finds five sealed envelopes with her will, each addressed to a mysterious man she’s never heard of. Maggie and her mother, Iris, weren’t close, especially since Maggie came out, but she never thought they would run out of time to figure each other out. Now in her late twenties, Maggie is finally in something resembling a serious relationship, wondering if some of whatever shaped her parents’ decades-long love story might exist after all. Overwhelmed by her grief and frustrated with her family, Maggie decides to escape the shiva and hand-deliver her mother’s letters. The ensuing road trip takes her over miles of California highways, through strangers’ recollections of a second, hidden life (that seems almost impossible to reconcile with the Iris she knew), and a journey through her own fears as she navigates her new relationship. As she fills in the details of Iris’s story, Maggie must confront the possibility that almost everything she knew about her mother — her marriage, her lukewarm relationship to Judaism, her disapproval of her daughter’s queerness — is more meaningful than she ever allowed herself to imagine.