Mothers

From Mexican writer Lozano (Witches) comes a smashing novel set in 1946, as a wave of kidnappings shock and scandalize northern Mexico. Gloria Felipe, mother of five, discovers one morning that her youngest daughter, also named Gloria, has vanished while playing hopscotch. The police, led by Capt. Ruben Dario “Two Poems” Hernandez, come to Felipe’s aid, but are stymied by false leads from opportunists looking for a quick payday. The real culprit is a working-class woman named Nuria Valencia Perez, who has been struggling to conceive. Nuria rechristens the younger Gloria as Agustina and forcibly adopts her into her own struggling family while keeping her under lock and key. What ensues is equal parts detective story, family drama, and social novel, as Two Poems’s daring rescue attempts are intercut with Gloria’s and Nuria’s efforts to keep their families together and earn approval as women capable of motherhood. “There’s no greater force in the world than desire,” Lozano writes. “There’s nothing more dangerous than a mother.” Through newspaper clippings, interior monologues, and set pieces in police stations, orphanages, and other institutions, Lozano crafts a darkly comic and deeply human narrative. It’s an unforgettable portrait of maternal envy gone mad. (Oct.)