Mothering Sunday

Sara James

A DECISION made on the spur of the moment many decades ago is set to change how a woman views both herself and her mother in a beautiful, heartbreaking story that was just made for Mother’s Day.

Sara James, who studied at St Martin’s School of Art in London and went on to work for national papers and women’s magazines, blends both her artistic and writing skills for an exploration of motherhood in a compelling family drama featuring forbidden love, long-buried secrets, sacrifice and forgiveness.

One crisp and bright Mothering Sunday, artist Alexandra (Ally) Abbott is on her way to meet her elderly mother Elizabeth at the Hayward Gallery in London. It hasn’t been a good day so far – her two children have been arrested during a climate change protest on Westminster Bridge.

Ally sees art as ‘humanity’s voice,’ an expression against whatever problems the world is facing but the rest of her family did not view life this way. As she grew up, it seemed to Ally that her businessman father, accountant mother and physics teacher brother had a completely different identity.

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But when Ally is struck by one of the Hayward’s expressionist paintings – a work from 1963 by a woman called Kitty Campbell – it opens a long-closed door on a secret that her mother has kept buried for over 50 years.

In April 1963, aspiring artist Kitty Campbell has recently given birth to her first child in a mother and baby home. Kitty is to give her baby away for adoption but, when the day comes, she can’t bring herself to part with her tiny daughter. In desperation, Kitty flees. She stops at a tea shop to feed her hungry baby and meets the owner Bet, a mother with her own heartache to bear. But Bet is kind to Kitty, holding the baby and offering a listening ear. Then Kitty makes a decision that will change all their lives for ever. Several decades later, can the truth from that day finally right the past and bring a mother and daughter together?

Full of insight and wisdom, Mothering Sunday is an inspirational story with uplifting messages about family love, belonging and second chances, and is the perfect gift for your own special mum.
(Orion, paperback, £8.99)