Audrey Meyerwitz wants to create a family. A healthy family. For her, that means the first step is to start dating again. But for a lesbian introvert with generalized anxiety disorder, finding the right person can be hard. Luckily, she has her best friend Jessica, a sober alcoholic, to help introduce her to the world of online dating.
Through this, she meets Denise, a Francophone Canadian, and falls in love. But moving to Canada with Denise brings its own challenges: learning French, leaving her friends and her single mom, and finding new connections, while also worrying about Jessica’s sobriety. When she and Denise finally take steps to start their family (jumping right to IVF without first trying simple assisted insemination, for unexplained reasons), Audrey becomes pregnant with twins. One of the babies is born with Down Syndrome, however, and Audrey and Denise must decide whether to place her for adoption with a family that could better meet her needs, a decision that forces Audrey to reexamine her own identity as a disabled person and an adoptee.
She also decides to seek more information about her own birth mother—and this leads to revelations about her family that upends what she thought was true. How can she incorporate this new knowledge? And how can she balance motherhood, desires that threaten her marriage, and her obligations to friends old and new?
Author Gail Marlene Schwartz paints a picture of complex human relationships, of family found, formed, and chosen, and of the ways that people find strength and meaning in their lives, despite its unexpected turns. The first-person perspective at times gives the book the feel of a memoir, while the dialogue keeps the story moving and makes readers feel like they are in the room with the characters. Despite (or perhaps because of) the sometimes-heavy topics, this is an ultimately hopeful tale, as we see flawed, human characters finding their way, just as we might be doing.
Both Audrey and Denise are White; Audrey is also Jewish, and we see her connection to Jewish culture reflected throughout the book.
Content warning: One relationship (not Audrey and Denise’s) is abusive; and a character dies by suicide.
