The Mother: A Novel

The author of the critically acclaimed A Cupboard Full of Coats makes her hardcover debut with a provocative and timely novel about an emotionally devastated mother’s struggle to understand her teenage son’s death, and her search for meaning and hope in the wake of incomprehensible loss.

The unimaginable has happened to Marcia Williams. Her bright and beautiful sixteen-year-old son, Ryan, has been brutally murdered. Consumed by grief and rage, she must bridle her dark feelings and endure something no mother should ever have to experience: she must go to court for the trial of the killer—another teenage boy—accused of taking her son’s life.

How could her son be dead? Ryan should have been safe—he wasn’t the kind of boy to find himself on the wrong end of a knife carried by a dangerous young man like Tyson Manley. But as the trial proceeds, Marcia finds her beliefs and assumptions challenged as she learns more about Ryan’s death and Tyson’s life, including his dysfunctional family. She also discovers troubling truths about her own. As the strain of Ryan’s death tests their marriage, Lloydie, her husband, pulls farther away, hiding behind a wall of secrets that masks his grief, while Marcia draws closer to her sister, who is becoming her prime confidant.

One person seems to hold the answers—and the hope—Marcia needs: Tyson’s scared young girlfriend, Sweetie. But as this anguished mother has learned, nothing in life is certain. Not anymore.

A beautiful, engrossing novel that illuminates some of the most important and troubling issues of our time, The Motheris a moving portrait of love, tragedy, and survival—and the aftershocks from a momentary act of cruel violence that transforms the lives of everyone it touches.

Marcia’s husband, Lloydie, expresses his tender love for his wife each morning by preparing a cup of tea and setting it by her bedside. This routine was part of the wonderful, secure life they had built, complete with a brilliant and handsome sixteen-year-old son, Ryan.

Then the unimaginable happens, and in a single moment Marcia is stripped clean of everything she had presumed was hers for keeps. Ryan, not the kind of boy to find himself on the wrong end of a knife, is brutally murdered. As the trial takes apart her son’s life and reassembles it in front of strangers, Marcia, always certain of Ryan’s virtues, finds her beliefs and assumptions challenged as she learns more about her son’s death and of the life of her son’s killer, Tyson. 

“Love, loss, pain, race, poverty, abuse and redemption are all beautifully played out in Edwards’ novel about a mother struggling to not just ‘remain alive, but live.’ Edwards’ story moves us in and out of a courtroom and into the heart of human suffering and ultimate strength.” - Naseem Rakha, author of The Crying Tree

“Seduces with gripping and enticing storytelling. It takes you through an amazing arrangement of emotions: anger, hate, despair, and grief, while tapping into what it means to yearn for a sense of humanity. An intense, pressure cooker of a novel, showing that Edwards is a star.” - Guy A. Sims, Author of Living Just a Little, Monster, and Brotherman Revelation

“Between the living and the dead stands The Mother. Eloquent, frank, superb.” - Rita Williams-Garcia, winner of the Newbery Honor Award and Coretta Scott King Award

“[A] tour de force that deserves recognition and as wide an audience as possible.” - Patrik Bass, Essence

“Edwards perceptively explores a wide realm of issues, uncovering layer by layer the complicated answers to the questions that have hounded Marcia since her son’s death… Edwards writes with compassion for her characters and with intuitive understanding of the effects of loss on a family, as well as the underlying causes that can lead to senseless crimes such as this one. The Mother is highly recommended for readers who enjoy current issue-related fiction by authors such as Jodi Picoult and Jacquelyn Mitchard.” - BookPage

“Here are beautifully drawn characters anchored in the universal experiences of love, loss, and grieving. With subtle nuance and elegant precision, Edwards crafts a richly detailed world that holds up the great weight that bears down on it: the death of a child.” - Kirkus Reviews

“Riveting… [The Mother] explores how one mother copes with the murder of her son-and the courtroom drama of the trial that follows.” - The Root

“A mother learns more about her murdered teenage son, and her family, than she knew possible during his killer’s trial.” - Brooklyn Magazine

“The Mother is beautiful in the clarity of its writing and honest emotion in its depiction of grief. Yvvette Edwards is a formidable talent.” - Jervey Tervalon, author of Monster Chef, The Cocaine Chronicles, and Dead Above Ground

“Yvvette Edwards knows how to break your heart. Vivid and real, I care about her characters they way I’d care about my own kin.” - Mitchell Jackson, author of The Residue Years and Oversoul

“This is the clear, rhythmic, honest tale that black mothers raising young black men know: surreal loss and the more surreal truth that we and our children are deeply connected to other black women and their children, no matter where we’ve come from.” - Zelda Lockhart, author of Fifth Born

“In this memorable story of strength in the aftermath of violent tragedy, Edwards paints a close, vivid portrait of a mother’s unrelenting mission to avoid anger and blame, instead finding real justice and necessary closure.” - Publishers Weekly

“Ms. Edwards delicately portrays a complex dance of a woman seeking justice for her child. The Mother is a potent novel that brings to light the sting of inequities in both the public and private spheres of London, yet somehow manages to deliver characters who, through love, find a way to save themselves from a riptide of calamity. This mother, Marcia Williams, digs deep into her heart and yours as she peels away the many fragile layers of loss.” - Lauren Francis-Sharma, author of Til the Well Runs Dry

I”n the follow-up to her Man Booker Prize-nominated debut, A Cupboard Full of Coats, Edwards delivers a quietly devastating novel about a mother’s attempt to survive after the murder of her 16-year-old son.... Set in Edwards’ native London, the book’s delicate, lyrical prose belies the horrifying events that propel the plot. Readers’ assumptions are challenged, along with Marcia’s, as the twisted realities of life for poor, urban teenagers become clear. Edwards manages to pull off a serious examination of how the social contract is failing a large portion of Britain’s urban population without moralizing in what is, ultimately, the story of one family’s road to acceptance and healing in the wake of a tragic loss.” - Booklist