A story of learning to accept life’s harsh truths and not lose hope in the midst of despair, “Mother Tongue” by Joyce Kornblatt illustrates the intertwined nature of pain and personal growth. In the words of Nella Pine, the main character, it’s one of life’s mysteries: “Beauty resides in blight, and blight in beauty – each holds the other like a seed in its hand.” 

The novel, first published in Australia in 2021, follows 45-year-old Nella as she discovers that Eve, the woman she knew as her mother, was not her mother at all: rather, Eve was a labor and delivery nurse named Ruth who abducted Nella from a hospital in Pittsburgh when she was just three days old. Ruth raised her in a small Australian village, and this earth-shattering truth was discovered only after Ruth’s death. As Nella reads and rereads Ruth’s confession, she is desperate to understand why someone would do such a thing. Ruth offers little clarity or explanation. “I was compelled,” she writes.

The reader follows Nella’s emotional journey as she tries to express her feelings through writing. In some ways, it’s “easier to remember the pain through the prism of craft,” she writes. Nella – who learns her real name is Naomi – explores the history of both the family who raised her and the family she never knew. A series of letters, musings, and remembrances reveal just how many lives were forever changed by this terrible act. But through the stories of other characters, the reader sees how these acts don’t happen in isolation. Generational trauma plays a role in many of the characters’ lives and choices, and perhaps is one reason that Ruth was “compelled” to do something so harmful.