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From award-winning author Peter Godwin, an “eloquent” (The Wall Street Journal) memoir about his evolving relationships with the women and places that shaped his life.
Peter Godwin’s mother is dying.
Born in England, and having spent most of her adult life as a doctor in Zimbabwe, she now lies on a hospital bed in the partitioned living room of his sister’s London home.
Peter has spent his life missing his Zimbabwean childhood, a longing that does not diminish as he reflects on his time as a journalist on the frontlines of combat around the world, or life in New York with his English wife and transatlantic children. In his mother’s final months, he must come to terms with everything his family was and wasn’t: the secrets they kept from one another, the stoicism that sometimes threatened to destroy them, and the beauty of the wildly different places they called home.
With generations of history behind him, Godwin lyrically brings us into the spaces which make us question and suffer, shows us how we can heal our own scars, and celebrate the lives we have among family and friends.
“Elegiac….Godwin contends with his wounds through reflection, humor, and quiet resolve.”
—The New Criterion
“Eloquent…beautiful…. Mr. Godwin writes about his ma with affection and careful detail. Gentle humor is ever-present.”
—Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal
“Often absurdly funny….Godwin has experienced enough loss to know that humor and grief can, and should, occupy the same space.”
—Dina Gachman, the New York Times
“A search-and-not-destroy mission to dissolve entrenched inhibitions, moral ambiguities, and the numbness of survivor’s guilt….A quiet reminder of the possibility of rebirth.”
—Celia McGee, AirMail
