Mothers and Their Secrets

Two days ago was Mothering Sunday, or you may call it Mother's Day. It was, I'm sure, a bitter sweet date on the calendar for many of you like me whose mums are no longer with us. It got me thinking about the strength of the bond between a mother and her children. I have completed two novels and am planning a third. What they all have in common is the relationship between a mother and her daughter and the lengths the mothers will go to in order to protect her child. In all of them, there is a dual narrative - the mother's story and the daughter's story - and all three stories contain secrets.

Rose is the young mother in my first novel, 'The Secret Daughter', set just after WWII. She keeps her forbidden love affair a secret from her parents

How I imagine Greystone Hall
where Rose worked in the kitchens

and when she becomes a mother herself, the maternal bond is too strong for her to 'do the right thing', as the social climate of the time demanded. She involves the one person who means the most to her, her own mother Emma. Without giving away spoilers, Emma's role in the story involves more secrets, keeping the truth both from Rose's father and from Angie, Rose's daughter. When the lies are exposed by accident, we see in Angie's story the effects secrets can have on a family. 

The scene greeting Elin when
 she arrived on Pefká

In 'Whispering Olive Trees', Lexi doesn't know about her mother, Elin's secret until after her death. By leaving Lexi her diary, it is clear that Elin wanted to reveal her secret so that Lexi has a choice and can find out about her mother's life before she was born if she wants to. When Lexi travels to Greece, she goes with her mother's blessing. As the secrets are revealed, Lexi comes to understand why her mother never mentioned her summer spent in Greece again after she returned home. Elin's own mother, Sadie, plays an important role in this story, too.

How I imagine the farm where
 Annie and her family lived 

Annie Evans is the mother in 'The Locket', the working title for book three. Unlike Rose and Elin she has no mother of her own to turn to, her mother having died in childbirth with a younger sibling. She has to take desperate measures for the sake of her daughter and that secret will only be revealed when Clara's well-being is threatened. How and when that will happen will be determined as I plot out the novel. That's my next task!

All three of my stories have secrets at their heart. I'm fascinated by the way families have 'skeletons' in their cupboards and these sometimes only come to light when a family member dies. In real life, we could ask whether it's ever right to keep secrets. In fiction, of course, secrets often make a good story-line. In fact at my first RNA conference, one editor in a 1-to-1 Industry Appointment talked to me about how secrets in stories, in titles even, can make a novel more 'commercial'. 

I've been revisiting two books I've enjoyed that contain secrets. For Mothering Sunday, a few years ago, my daughter bought me 'Mothering Sunday' by Rosie Goodwin. Set in 1884, it's a moving , heart warming saga about a young girl called Sunday Small who was abandoned at birth on the front steps of a workhouse, on a Sunday - hence her name. She is driven on to leave the workhouse and dreams of being re-united with the mother who gave her away. 'Her mother would be tall and slender with hair exactly the same colour as her own, and her eyes would be as blue as bluebells . . . There would be no more chores.' 
Unsure of how the secret would be revealed by the end of the book kept me turning the pages and living every moment with Sunday.

Another book I have thoroughly enjoyed is 'Motherlove' by Thorne Moore.It is very different, being contemporary fiction, and involves 'Three mothers, Two babies, One desperate woman'. Its tagline reads One mother's need is another's nightmare. There are deeply buried secrets in this novel, too. The story is written from each of the characters' points of view, exploring the diverse complexity of what it means to be a mother. The lives of the three mothers and two daughters are linked because of something that happened in the past. 

Thank you for reading. What books involving mothers' secrets would you recommend? Is it ever right for mothers to keep secrets from their children? Have you got secrets as part of your plots in your stories? 

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