To be honest, I thought MOTHERS AND OTHER STRANGERS was a thriller. At least that is the feeling I got from the book's blurb. The first thing the blurb says about the book is: "My father proposed to my mother at gunpoint when she was nineteen, and knowing that she was already pregnant with a dead man's child, she accepted." Wow, that is what I call a captivating line. I just had to read this book! Alas, this book is not a thriller. It's about a woman finding herself, learning more about the past, and finding peace.

MOTHERS AND OTHER STRANGERS by Gina Sorell is about Elsie's search to find who she really is and who her mother was. For Elsie, life has never been easy with a narcissistic mother who was more interested in the sect she joined when Elsie was young than being a mother. Elsie practically raised herself and is now almost forty years old. She is newly divorced and has just buried her mother. Perhaps now she will finally find out the truth about her past, about her father, and why her mother never really was interested in Elsie.

MOTHERS AND OTHER STRANGERS may have been far from a thriller, but that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the book. Vice versa, to be honest. I found it refreshing to read about a woman that has to unravel the past in order to move forward. I did think the story would spend more time in Africa than it did. Instead, there were a lot of flashbacks to Elsie's past to show the reader her life and traumatic experiences, but I enjoyed that. I enjoyed getting to know Elsie and learning more about the sect that her mother had joined and that seemed so important to her. And, at the end, I kind of understood Elsie's mother, well, I understood her motive after learning the truth about her past. To really understand is perhaps a bit far-fetched. It's the kind of book that made me wish I could read a couple of more chapters after the book was finished to see how Elsie's life would turn out now that she finally knows it all.

MOTHERS AND OTHER STRANGERS is a beautifully written book and I'm looking forward to reading more from Gina Sorell in the future. This is the perfect book to read if you are looking for a book about a woman's quest to find the truth about her family.

Book Summary

"My father proposed to my mother at gunpoint when she was nineteen, and knowing that she was already pregnant with a dead man’s child, she accepted."

Thus begins this riveting story of a woman's quest to understand her recently deceased mother, a glamorous, cruel narcissist who left her only child, Elsie, an inheritance of debts and mysteries. While coping with threats that she suspects are coming from the cult-like spiritual program her mother belonged to, Elsie works to unravel the message her dying mother left for her, a quest that ultimately takes her to the South African family homestead she never knew existed.