On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp --- an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan --- herbalist and eccentric Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three estranged daughters. The youngest --- the beautiful, inscrutable and lazy Rose Thorn --- has left her own daughter, 11-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild. Donkey spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape and in her math books, waiting for her wayward mother and longing for a father, unaware that family secrets, passionate love and violent men will flood through the swamp and upend her idyllic childhood.

Bonnie Jo Campbell is a keen observer of life and trouble in rural America, and her working-class protagonists can be at once vulnerable, wise, cruel and funny. The strong but flawed women of MOTHERS, TELL YOUR DAUGHTERS must negotiate a sexually charged atmosphere as they love, honor and betray one another against the backdrop of all the men in their world. Such richly fraught mother-daughter relationships can be lifelines, anchors, or they can sink a woman like a stone.

Margo Crane is just 14 years old when her world begins to unravel, starting with the death of her beloved grandfather. When the unimaginable happens, 16-year-old Margo takes a rifle and hits the Stark River in her rowboat. In search of her mother, she discovers much more.