Clara’s mother is famous for the nude portraits she took of Clara throughout her childhood.

Clara has spent her entire adult life pulling away from her mother. At age eighteen, sick of her notoriety as 'the girl in the pictures', Clara fled New York City, settling and making her own family in small-town Maine. But years later, when her mother reaches out from her deathbed, Clara suddenly finds herself drawn back to the past she thought she had escaped.

From the beloved author of SIGNAL FIRES and FAMILY HISTORY, BLACK & WHITE is a moving love letter to those familial bonds that both bruise and make you in equal measure.

‘Spellbinding...provocative, hypnotic’ USA Today
‘Uncompromising storytelling’ Los Angeles Times
‘Ambitious…thrilling’ TimeOut New York

"Shapiro does something rather thrilling with her story: she gets it just right." - Washington Post

"Universal dilemmas face us all, and it is the novelist's job to breathe life into them one way or another, and this is something Shapiro does very well indeed" - New York Times Book Review

"Trenchant and enduring" - Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Shapiro's central characters are expertly rendered" - Elle Magazine

"Spellbinding...provocative, hypnotic...spot-on authentic. A cool depiction of a mother and daughter's fraught and fiery relationship" - USA Today