A debut that explores sexuality, family trauma, and grief — after our main character’s mother dies in a car crash and leaves mysterious letters to five different men — but it’s all packed in a smart, funny package. The novel offers readers a nuanced, fully realized protagonist struggling to come to terms with death, her transition to adulthood, and the leap of faith required to let people in. Currently, she is a doctoral student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she also serves as the assistant nonfiction editor for Prairie Schooner.

All My Mother’s Lovers is a beautiful celebration of this continuity, and the value of communication across generations.

I only have a little bit of my day to listen (versus no time to read), and with the nature of this particular plot (daughter of deceased mother finds letters to four strangers to be sent if she dies - there by creating a journey for the daughter to deliver these letters) made things a little repetitive. Unfolding over the course of nine days, and written with enormous heart, All My Mother's Lovers is a meditation on the universality and particularity of family ties, grief, and generational divides, as well as a tender and biting portrait of sex, gender, and identity. there’s not really a mystery involved or anything super important in the plot, it’s more just used as a device for character development and the overall complexity of the novel. As we go through the story, we watch Maggie evolve from an angsty somewhat immature twenty something to someone who begins to understand the complexity of relationships as she learns about her mother as a person versus her mother as a parent.

This book pissed me off from start to finish and I am now on the hunt for something better to read to cleanse the palate so I don't have to end 2020 on such a sour note. It tells the story of Maggie, who uncovers a series of stories about her mother, who has recently died, that will shake both her understanding of her mother but also herself. The novel’s setup and accompanying journey are both absorbing, but they yield somewhat superficial discoveries about Iris.Well-written, this seemed superficial at the start but once a third of the way in the details became lush and the emotions real. The book's present-day storyline takes place in 2017, and it was super fascinating to look at a year that seems so recent with an almost historical lens to it.

As she sets to work, she discovers her mother’s will and five envelopes addressed to men she has never before heard of.

We meet the lovers of the title, but don’t ever understand many of the choices Iris makes while in their company.