The Light Through the Branches
“I want a tribunal. A three-judge truth and reconciliation thing. I want her to answer for everything.”
In late middle age, Kate Laidlaw begins to examine her troubled relationship with her mother, now ninety-three and confined to memory care. Her tribunal ranges widely, from the Omaha of her mother’s childhood to the small coastal town of Santa Maria, California, where Kate grew up in a household dominated by her stepfather. It leads through the triumphs and heartbreaks of Kate’s school life and to the bedroom where her stepfather undressed her. It forces her to look at her mother’s early trauma and at the darkest hours of Kate’s own long marriage.
As Kate cares and advocates for her mother and her anger and bitterness subside, other feelings emerge: the tenderness that comes with caring for a loved one and the undeniable bonds of kinship.
With this brilliant debut novel, written in exquisite and evocative prose, Anne Matlack Evans offers a fresh perspective on childhood trauma, on the lessons taught by family, and on the universal longing for grace and wisdom.
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Anne Matlack Evans has published fiction in The Bennington Review, Eclipse, and Memoir and nonfiction in The Ruminator Review and the San Francisco Chronicle. She received an MA in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, an MFA in fiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. A professor of English and creative writing at Napa Valley College, she also directed the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. She lives in Napa, California, where she teaches comparative literature and writing and enjoys playing the piano and walking her unruly Portuguese water dog.