Although we’re long past the Victorian era, motherhood is still romanticized and idealized in much of the popular culture, and the myth that it’s a “sweet vocation,” and never anything more fraught or complicated, has persisted to a frustrating degree. Michelle Ross’s unflinching and unsparing new book offers a welcome corrective to this myth, tearing it apart and devouring it, story by perceptive story. The honesty of the tales is as refreshing as it is unsettling.

In this moving and perceptive collection of linked stories, characters are at uncertain and unsettled times of their lives–perhaps, in an unsatisfying relationship or situation that they can’t quite bring themselves to leave, or in a liminal space between their life as it is (or was) and what it might potentially be. Although the characters rarely find clear answers or resolutions, they make profound discoveries about themselves, and about life.

What might be gained, or lost, by diving into the wreckage of one’s past? And what might one learn about herself, and those closest to her, in the process? This perceptive and darkly funny novel takes up these questions in multiple ways, conveying the dangers and possibilities of such a venture.

I’m grateful to Raven Chronicles Press for bringing this extraordinary historical novel, originally published in 1997, back into print. Set in nineteenth-century Mexico, the book is revelatory and inspiring on many levels. For one thing, it sheds light on the lives and struggles of Mexican Jews, who practiced their religion in secret for fear of persecution. For another, it immerses us in the lives of women who do the opposite of existing in the shadows, as many of their counterparts would have been forced to do at the time.

Described as “prose snapshots,” each of the stories in this evocative, wide-ranging collection captures significant or telling moments, encounters, or observations in 50 words or fewer. Together, they add up to something far greater than the sum of their parts, creating a rich, layered portrait of the human experience.

In novels or dramas about fraught romantic relationships, the narrative often feels bent toward disintegration, with the possibility–and sometimes the inevitability–of separation looming over every scene. What distinguishes Cynthia Newberry Martin’s début novel, Tidal Flats, is how it deeply it immerses us in one character’s process of figuring out what might be lost or gained by staying in a seriously challenged relationship, or by moving on from it. The outcome of her process never feels certain nor inevitable, and the result is a captivating and illuminating read.