Author(s): Joyce Carol Oates

Fiction

Last time you see someone and you don't know it will be the last time. And all that you know now, if only you'd known then. But you didn't know, and now it's too late. And you tell yourself How could I have known, I could not have known. "You tell yourself. "This is my story of missing my mother. One day, in a way unique to you, it will be your story, too. From Joyce Carol Oates comes this candid, intimate, engaging, and personal new novel. When her mother uncharacteristically fails to return her phone calls, 31-year-old Nikki Eaton calls in to check up on her. She finds the house turned upside-down, and her mother lying dead, murdered, on the garage floor. Single, sexually liberated and economically self-supporting, Nikki has never particularly thought of herself as a daughter. She learns to cope with the unexpected loss of her mother over the course of a tumultuous year of mourning that brings sorrow, and even, from an unexpected source, a nurturing love. First published 2005.