Following the enormous success of BROKEN COUNTRY, return to Clare Leslie Hall’s backlist with DAYS YOU WERE MINE. This poignant, gripping family drama --- previously published as MINE under the pseudonym Clare Empson --- chronicles a man’s reunion with his birth mother and the life-changing decisions that once broke them apart.

Adopted shortly after being born, Luke has never really felt a great urgency to locate his birth parents. At the same time, like many adopted children and young adults, he carries with him a sort of generational trauma of never feeling like he fits in. He knows that his adoptive parents love him, but he has always felt a bit at odds with them. He was never quite the biological child they imagined and not spectacular enough in any way to be considered a jackpot.

These feelings come to a boil when Luke and his girlfriend, Hannah, have their own child, Samuel. When Hannah pushes Luke to do some digging, he learns that his birth mother, Alice Garland, is alive and well and lives close enough to him to reach out and schedule a coffee date. The 47-year-old woman who meets him is stop-traffic gorgeous and an accomplished artist, a career choice that mirrors his own as an A&R man in the music industry.

"[T]his is a breathtakingly beautiful character study, but also a clear-eyed, inspiring meditation on sacrifice, inheritance, and the lengths to which we will go to finally feel like we belong."

As the two begin to navigate their new relationship, uncomfortable feelings begin to rise to the surface. Luke always hoped that his biological parents were just down-on-their-luck teens, perhaps even with economic or substance abuse issues. Instead, he finds that they are esteemed artists. His father, Richard, who is also alive and nearby, is an icon often asked to paint portraits of celebrities and monarchs. So why did they feel the need to give him up, to condemn him to a lifetime of “why me” and “why not me”?

As Luke tries to probe Alice for answers, she becomes cagey, oscillating between referencing family days on the water and denying that she ever spent much time with him at all. It’s clear that she's hiding something. But is it a Pandora’s box of secrets, or just her own shame and trauma at not having been able to provide for her son?

In alternating chapters, Clare Leslie Hall details Alice’s young adulthood: attending a prestigious art school, befriending a dazzling young artist named Richard, and discovering her sexuality as a young woman. Early on in Alice’s timeline, she meets and falls head over heels for Jacob Earl, an up-and-coming musician with that certain unattainable “it” quality. Even as Alice is aware that she and Richard are gifted artists, she knows that Jacob is undeniable in his talent, charisma and stage presence.

Raised by an abusive minister, Alice believes herself to be boring and plain, not at all the kind of woman who could capture the eye of such an intoxicating man. When she and Jacob immediately hit it off, though, her whole world explodes, especially when she is asked to draw the cover art for his band’s next album. Paired with the heady rush of professional achievement, their love affair becomes even more emotionally charged, moving at a lightning-fast pace right up until the shocking moment when Alice discovers that she is pregnant.

In the present day, Luke and Alice continue to struggle to navigate their new relationship. When Alice offers to become Luke and Hannah’s nanny, caring for Samuel so that Hannah can return to work, it seems that they’ve finally cracked the code to familial contentment. But far from easing the pains of adoption, Luke’s proximity to Alice opens old scars. Watching Alice care for and tend to his son awakens in him an ugly jealousy, one that he knows is ridiculous but cannot be ignored. Alice, meanwhile, continues to tiptoe around stories of Luke’s birth and why she and Richard chose to give him up.

As both timelines speed toward a conclusion, DAYS YOU WERE MINE takes on the pace of a psychological thriller, with Hall maintaining exquisite, haunting tension between mother and son, past and present, fact and fiction. Perhaps more than he ever believed, the answers to Luke’s pain and feelings of inadequacy lie in Alice’s past. Through it all, Hall presents gentle, compassionate musings on inheritance, parent-child bonds and relationships, and the aching, bittersweet concept of reunion.

Populated with relatable, deeply complex characters and bolstered by Hall’s expert command of the dual-timeline construction, this is a breathtakingly beautiful character study, but also a clear-eyed, inspiring meditation on sacrifice, inheritance, and the lengths to which we will go to finally feel like we belong. Her handling of the sensitive, even taboo, topics of adoption and mental illness is masterly, and she bravely chronicles the worst, ugliest feelings that come with both while never going so far as to judge or punish her characters.

As in life, there is no black or white in a Clare Leslie Hall novel, and this book is all the better for it. She thrives in these gray areas, and is more comfortable with nuance and complexity than some of the most experienced and lauded authors writing today. The fact that it was penned before her breakout hit is proof that there is much more to come from her.

If BROKEN COUNTRY was your first exposure to this brilliant, must-read author, then DAYS YOU WERE MINE will feel like coming home. If you’re just now discovering Hall and her works, don’t let this be the last novel of hers that you read. I guarantee you won’t regret it.