“Sophie Lefens's voice is blazingly original. Her Kind is a poignant and revelatory meditation on motherhood, womanhood, and the friendships that sustain both. This novel will nourish, inspire, and console you—you'll want to stay in it as long as you can.”
—T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls and Whidbey
An exquisite, mist-laced debut novel about friendship and motherhood, fear and love, in which a woman plagued by visions of being pulled away from Earth invites her three closest friends for a weekend, to see who might care for her son if she dies
When Ada is left to raise her young son alone, she retreats to her otherworldly aunt Leigh’s crumbling lakeside home, seeking solace for herself and stability for Lenny. Yet, among the wildflowers and the hum of the water, Ada can’t escape the nagging feeling she might not have much time left. Sensing death grow nearer, she invites her three closest friends—a brash, unemployed seamstress; a gentle, disillusioned violinist; and a serious painter—to the house over a long weekend to determine which of them might take on the impossible: raising Lenny if she no longer can.
Amidst strange animal activity and Leigh’s mysterious late-night visits to her dead husband’s grave, the women find comfort and purpose in one another’s company as their stay extends into winter. Meanwhile, Leigh’s memory is fading fast, and Ada must confront past and present truths she’s spent a lifetime avoiding.
When death does finally come to the group, it sets off a chain of events that exposes long-hidden secrets and the true mystical nature of Leigh and her ancestral home. Written in attentive, insightful prose, Her Kind is an ode to the power of love to return us to ourselves.
“Her Kind is mesmerizing—a beautifully written, deeply immersive story about love, loss, and the way parenthood exposes the faultlines of mortality, this accomplished debut completely swept me away. I wanted to live in its pages, and felt its questions—about motherhood, most of all—in my bones. A book for everyone who has ever loved another human being beyond reason.”
— Julie Buntin, author of Marlena and Famous Men