The Hand That First Held Mine »

MAGGIE O'FARRELL is the author of four previous novels, including the acclaimed The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, which was a B&N Recommends Pick, and After You'd Gone. Born in Northern Ireland in 1972, O'Farrell grew up in Wales and Scotland. She has two children.

Lexie Sinclair yearns for more than her parents' genteel country life. She makes her way to the city, where she meets a magazine editor, Innes, a man unlike any she has ever imagined. He introduces her to the thrilling world of Bohemian postwar London, and Lexie learns to become a reporter, to know art and artists, to live fully, unconventionally, and with deep love. And when she finds herself pregnant by a man wholly unsuitable for marriage or fatherhood, she doesn't hesitate a minute to have the baby on her own.

Later, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood. Her boyfriend, Ted, traumatized by nearly losing her in labor, begins to recover lost memories. At first he cannot place them, but as they emerge, we discover something heartbreaking and beautiful that connects these two stories.

The Washington Post - Heller McAlpin

…mesmerizing, enormously satisfying…In viscerally poetic prose, O'Farrell captures "the utter loneliness" of motherhood and "the constant undertow of maternal anxiety"…The Hand That First Held Mine evokes Shirley Hazzard's 1980 masterpiece, The Transit of Venus,…an uncommonly gripping and moving read.