Prize women

When an earthquake leaves Lily's small town in shambles, her only concern is keeping her young son, Matteo, safe. After seeing her abusive husband trapped under the rubble, mother and son escape to start a new life in Toronto. They stay with Mae, a wealthy woman overwhelmed with mothering her own ever-growing brood. Initially wary of the new houseguests, Mae soon finds in Lily a much-needed companion, and the two strike up a deep friendship. At the dawn of the Great Depression, Mae and Lily soon find themselves trapped in parallel lives they never expected. Lea (The Metal Heart, 2021) builds on true events of the 1930s to investigate timeless questions of motherhood, domesticity, sacrifice, and partnership. She deftly handles the strong connection between Lily and Mae, with each experiencing the heartbreak of shunting their feelings aside to attend to the never-ending needs of their husbands, children, and household. Fans of Shelley Wood's The Quintland Sisters (2019), Patricia Harman's Midwife series, and the 2018 film Tully will fall in love with this sweeping and heartwarming novel.

Toronto's "Great Stork Derby" and the Great Depression inform Lea's historical novel which, on a micro level, spotlights the abuse and misrepresentation of women during this era. When childless lawyer Charles Millar writes a controversial will offering the bulk of his fortune to the woman who bears the most children between 1926 and 1936, this sets the scene for the lives of Lily di Marco and Mae Thébault to collide. Lily, fleeing with her son from an abusive husband, seems totally unlike rich, glamorous Mae. But both women are struggling with the roles and restrictions imposed upon them as women and mothers, as well as with the economic privations of the time. The Stork Derby offers Mae and Lily a possible way out of their spiraling lives, but it also threatens to destroy their burgeoning friendship. VERDICT Lea explores important issues and does not shy away from some of the heartbreaking aspects of life in the 1920s and 1930s. Fans of her earlier novel The Metal Heart or of Juliet Grames's The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna might enjoy this new and significant offering.--Tara Kunesh