All My MOther’s Lovers

Intimacy has always eluded twenty-seven-year-old Maggie Krause—despite being brought up by married parents, models of domestic bliss—until, that is, Lucia came into her life. But when Maggie’s mom, Iris, dies in a car crash, Maggie returns home only to discover a withdrawn dad, an angry brother, and, along with Iris's will, five sealed envelopes, each addressed to a mysterious man she’s never heard of.

In an effort to run from her own grief and discover the truth about Iris—who made no secret of her discomfort with her daughter's sexuality—Maggie embarks on a road trip, determined to hand-deliver the letters and find out what these men meant to her mother. Maggie quickly discovers Iris’s second, hidden life, which shatters everything Maggie thought she knew about her parents’ perfect relationship. What is she supposed to tell her father and brother? And how can she deal with her own relationship when her whole world is in freefall?

Told over the course of a funeral and shiva, and written with enormous wit and warmth, All My Mother's Lovers is a unique meditation on the universality and particularity of family ties and grief, and a tender and biting portrait of sex, gender, and identity, challenging us to question the nature of fulfilling relationships.

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SELECT PRESS

  • “This ambitious, deft, compassionate debut novel finds eternal truths in a very contemporary story: that even those we care for most remain mysteries to us, that our judgments of others' lives are always inadequate, that love demands heroism. Ilana Masad is an exciting talent."

    — Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You and Cleanness

  • “Masad’s impressive novel delves into varieties of that strange magic, love, and of its expansive, life-shaping possibilities. All My Mother’s Lovers is a debut of rare and vital generosity.”

    — R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries

  • “Ilana Masad's debut is a queer tour de force. A tender look at love, relationships, motherhood, and how we oftentimes hurt the people we love most with our silence. Compelling and astonishing, All My Mother's Lovers is a novel with family dynamics at its heart. This book goes hard and does not disappoint. Masad is a writer on the rise.”

    — Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

MORE PRAISE

“At it's heart, All My Mother's Lovers is about learning that the people we think we know the best can still surprise us. It's about that moment you realize that your parents exist as something other than your parent, that they have and have had a whole life that has nothing to do with being a parent. It's also about saying the important things when you have the chance and the unintended consequences of never saying those things.” —Melissa Taylor, E. Shaver Books, Savannah, Georgia

“All My Mother's Lovers is a beautifully told narrative that is a love story to sex, love, and relationships and how all of those things can intertwine in unexpected ways. Ilana Masad's writing is powerful and passionate and consuming. I loved this novel and others will too!” —Mary O’Malley, Anderson’s Bookshop, LaGrange, Illinois

“[Maggie’s] journey is difficult and complicated, much as her relationship with her mother, but the result helps her not only understand the driving factors in her mother’s life but their own complicated mother-daughter relationship. A heartbreakingly beautiful story of betrayal and acceptance, distrust and acceptance, and ultimately hope and trust.” —Beth Seufer Buss, Bookmarks, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

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