His Mother's Son [Paperback]

To those who meet Jana Thomas, hers seems a perfect life, with a beautiful home, a successful career as an ER doctor, a loving husband, and a darling six-year-old son named Evan. But inside, Jana is crumbling. Evan's seemingly normal all-boy tendencies are escalating her motherly worry into something close to hysteria, threatening her job, her marriage, and even her relationship with her son.
The real source of Jana's disintegration is a past she has kept buried for sixteen years. When that past begins to bleed into the present, Jana is forced to plunge into the emotional whirlpool she left behind-with results that are shattering, profound, and wrenchingly moving.
Reminiscent of Sue Miller and Jane Hamilton, Cai Emmons's extraordinary first novel strikes a fine balance between keen psychological observation and page-turning momentum.

PRAISE FOR HIS MOTHER'S SON
Gripping. Brings home the power and terror of maternal love. -O Magazine

Lovely writing . . . Emmons' emphasis is on her characters, and she draws them well. -Seattle Times

One

When Jana returns to the curtained cubicle, she finds eighty-three-year-old Mr. Cianetti has moved off the examining table and is sitting on a low metal stool. His frail crossed legs have hiked up the johnny so his genitals are visible, snuggled in the crack of his groin like resting mice, but he seems not to notice. His steady dark eyes follow her for a moment as she lays down his chart, then his face implodes in a grin which furrows the loose flesh of his cheeks and reduces his lips to mere lines but still comes out looking impish.

Jana loves her old patients. Ambitions all played out, they sit before her, ink still, mysterious with memory, removed from the dirty march of time. Some of these people are the ages her parents would be, though she rarely thinks of this, rarely allows herself to think of this.

Your parents must be proud, he says.

She leaves hlã=