August Blue

“The novel is shaped by Elsa’s longing for her birth mother and her struggle to make peace with women who turn away from their children, as Elsa’s mom did, and toward themselves, as Elsa herself must. The book unspools, in spare, charged vignettes, as a kind of pilgrim’s progress, with Elsa moving closer to her doppelgänger, the buried truth of her parentage, and her own artistic voice.”