Chris Power's stories are peopled by men and women who find themselves at crossroads or dead ends-characters who search without knowing what they seek. Their paths lead them to thresholds, bridges, rivers, and sites of mysterious, irresistible connection to the past. A woman uses her mother's old travel guide, aged years beyond relevance, to navigate on a journey to nowhere; a stand-up comic with writer's block performs a fateful gig at a cocaine-fueled bachelor party; on holiday in Greece, a father must confront the limits to which he can keep his daughters safe. Braided throughout is the story of Eva, a daughter, wife, and mother, whose search for a self and place of belonging tracks a devastating path through generations.
Ranging from remote English moors to an ancient Swedish burial ground to a hedonistic Mexican wedding, the stories in Mothers lay bare the emotional and psychic damage of life, love, and abandonment. Suffused with yearning, Power's transcendent prose expresses a profound ache for vanished pasts and uncertain futures.
"You won't be able to put [Mothers] down: As soon as you finish the quietly suspenseful book, you'll want to reread its opening story."
Ann Hulbert, The Atlantic
"[Power's characters] yearn for the individual moments in their lives to mean something, a quality that makes them lovingly human . . . Power manages to convey […] the universality of a certain ache, of simply not knowing which experiences, which people, will hold weight in the future."
