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MAUREEN O’BRIEN’s short stories and poems have appeared in several reviews and anthologies. She has taught writing at Trinity College, the University of Hartford, and St. Joseph’s College, and currently teaches at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. She has been the recipient of grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and Barbara Deming/Money for Women, and she was awarded the 2007 Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize. She lives in Connecticut.
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B-MOTHER
Harcourt – February 5, 2007 Hillary Birdsong’s idyllic New England childhood is brought to a sudden halt by the death of her beloved older brother. Brokenhearted and emotionally abandoned by her mother, Hillary consoles herself with city boy Miles, and at sixteen finds herself pregnant and a shame to her family. With few choices available to her—her parents won’t help her raise the child and the baby’s father doesn’t offer any support—she gives her baby boy up for adoption. Hillary endures the next eighteen years anticipating the day her natural-born son can legally contact her. A touching portrait of a broken family, the effects of an adolescent’s life-altering decision, and survival after the ravages of devastating loss, B-Mother is an exquisitely realized drama featuring a cast of characters you won’t soon forget. Praise for B-MOTHER “Keenly and beautifully aware of the New England setting, with its eccentricities and isolation, and full of memorable, well-developed characters.”—Library Journal “Hillary is given honor and dignity by O’Brien’s painstaking, concrete imagining of her life.”—Columbus Dispatch “O’Brien’s debut novel tells a heartbreaking tale about making life-altering decision at a young age. O’Brien’s narrative does convey the long, painful healing process of living through the devastating losses of a brother and a baby. And she aptly reveals the enormous cost of being forced to make such a life-altering decision at such a young age, and of the courage it takes to survive.”—Hartford Courant “[B-Mother] vividly conveys the enormous cost of being forced to make such a painful decision at such a young age.”—Booklist |
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