They are the daughters of her only daughter, the grandchildren she's never met. At the centre of this mesmerising story is the woman's quest to understand how a relationship that began in bliss - a mother besotted with her only child - arrived at a point of such unfathomable distance.

Weaving back and forth in time, she unravels memories and long-buried feelings, retracing the infinite acts of parental care, each so mundane and apparently benign, that together may have undermined what she most treasured. With exquisite psychological precision, Blum traces the seemingly insignificant missteps and deceptions of family life, where it's possible to cross the line between protectiveness and possession without even seeing it - and it's uncertain whether, or how, we can find our way back.