Blood-root: Tracing the Untelling of Motherless

Betsy Warland's new book is Blood-root: Tracing the Untelling of Motherless (Second Story), an unnecessarily clunky title for such a strong and wonderful book. There are encounters in this book between mother and daughter and daughter and father that will move you as much as anything else you read this year. Warland presents the narrative of her encounters with her mother, who is in decline, in tiny episodes that offer glimpses into a life without descending into mere vignettes: we are carried in and out of a difficult fading from (and a continuous revision of—her mother has die disconcerting habit of rewriting the past) a life that itself seems to have been a fading away, and a refusal.