Author(s): Lucy Neave

Aust Fiction

An unforgettable and profound novel about three generations of one family and the healing power of understanding where you've come from. As a teenager in the 1970s, Sarah is forced to leave her home in upstate New York to accompany a missionary to Idaho. When she falls pregnant, she is despatched to relatives in Sydney, who place her in a home for unmarried mothers. Years later her daughter, Bet, pieces together her mother's life story, hoping to understand her better. As she learns more about Sarah's past, Bet struggles to come to terms with her own history and identity, yet is determined to make peace with Sarah's choices before it's too late.Lucy Neave's moving and deeply personal second novel, Believe in Me, explores the relationships between mothers and their children across three generations of one family. The book questions what we can ever truly know of our parents' early lives, even as their experiences weave ineffably into our identities and destinies.

MATILDA BOOKSHOP REVIEW

Forced out of home as an attendant to a missionary in Idaho, a daydreaming teenager, Sarah, falls pregnant. With her life set in strange new motion she confronts belief, responsibility, desire and teenage motherhood as she is shipped off to relatives in Australia. Years later, Bet, her daughter stitches together the uneven threads of Sarah's life as an act of literary homage and praise to a woman whose life was defined by sacrifice. I loved this powerfully graceful novel. Molly