Three Mothers

Isla Richardson is seventeen when a car hits her and drives on without stopping. Her mother, Abby, is already a widow: her husband died five years earlier, and she now faces a second death in the family.

In the weeks that follow, Abby begins to find out things about her daughter that she never suspected. Each discovery shifts her picture of who Isla was and who she spent her time with.

The novel follows three mothers and their children, and every one of them is tied to the night of the hit-and-run in a way she would prefer not to look at closely. The crash itself stays fixed at the centre. What shifts from chapter to chapter is how much each woman really knows about her own child, and how much she will admit once she learns the truth.

This is a contemporary family drama built around a mystery. It centres on grief and on the secrets that parents and teenagers keep from one another, and the questions it raises are about knowledge, loyalty and silence rather than about the driver alone. Hannah Beckerman is the author.