Near the end of Sarah Cornwell's affecting debut novel, WHAT I HAD BEFORE I HAD YOU, Olivia, the narrator, reflects on the recent demise of her marriage: "When something broke in our house, a lamp or a glass, I would take it to my workbench and try to glue it back together. But if Sam found it before I did, he would drop it in the trash without a thought. This is why I left him in the end."

However, the "something broke[n]" in this case is metaphorical, not a mug or a vase but the couple's nine-year-old son, Daniel, recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Sam's reluctance to try to "fix" Daniel isn't really the story here. Rather, the focus is on Olivia and the elements of her past that compel her to relate to Daniel and try to save him, regardless of the impact on her marriage.

"Cornwell's energies seem equally invested in both halves of Olivia's story, and readers' will be, too."

The novel's opening finds Olivia approaching her old home town of Ocean Vista, New Jersey, accompanied by Daniel and her teenage daughter, Carrie. The three are heading to New York City from Austin, Texas, on their way to a new life after the breakup of Olivia and Sam's marriage. They're in town to stay with Olivia's old friend Kandy and her family, but when they make a stop on the boardwalk to allow Daniel and Carrie to take in the Jersey Shore, Daniel disappears. Olivia's anxiety over her fragile son's disappearance casts her mind back to her own youth in Ocean Vista, to her own desire to run away from her family.

In particular, Olivia recalls the summer of 1987, when she was 15 years old. Up until that point, she had led a fairly isolated life with her single mother. Olivia's mother was beautiful but, at best, eccentric, a grocery store clerk with an endless string of "boyfriends" and claims of psychic powers. Only Olivia knew just how bleakly her mother's "eccentricities" manifested themselves at home: her mother kept a nursery fully operational for the two stillborn baby girls she bore before she had Olivia, and she also had a tendency to disappear for days at a time, leaving Olivia to fend for herself from a very young age. When Olivia spots two teenage girls on the beach who bear a strong resemblance to her mother, she wonders if these could be her lost sisters --- and then, when she fails to find them again, if they could indicate her own mental instability.

Olivia's search for her sisters that summer started her down a path not only of bad behavior (including drinking, drugs, sex and betrayal) but also of increased independence from her mother and a first attempt to understand from a mature perspective exactly why her mother acted the way she did. As an adult, Olivia finds it impossible to forget that summer, as she combs not only the beaches but also her old haunts, searching for her missing child.

Cornwell's narrative moves back and forth between past and present, alternating chapters between Olivia's teenage self and her middle-age one. The common geographical setting ties the two stories together seamlessly, as does Olivia's continued questioning of her own capability, and maybe even her own sanity. Cornwell's energies seem equally invested in both halves of Olivia's story, and readers' will be, too. Olivia's journey is one both away from her mother's oppressive presence and towards an understanding of her, especially as Olivia struggles with motherhood herself.