First published 2024
In March 2020, Martha McPhee travels with her husband and two nearly adult children to her childhood home in New Jersey. Her mother is sliding into severe dementia, and the sprawling property needs urgent attention. A broken septic system, invasive bamboo, and dying ash trees demand immediate care. As Martha manages her mother's condition and tackles the deteriorating house, memories of her unconventional upbringing flood back. She grew up at Omega Farm with four sisters, five stepsiblings, her mother, and stepfather in a household brimming with art, visitors, and unpredictable energy that could turn from nurturing to troubling. While Martha tends to both her mother and her own children, trying to restore the damaged forest, the past intrudes relentlessly. Her mother, the one person who could help her make sense of those memories or answer difficult questions, no longer recognizes her. This story weaves together family complexity, environmental restoration, and personal healing as Martha discovers how confronting her origins can reshape her understanding of what came before.
Genres: literary-fiction, family-life, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: New Jersey
Period: March 2020
272 pages · Paperback · Scribner
Content warnings: mental-illness