THE MOTHERS

In 1917, while the world is at war, Alma and her children are living in a sleep-out at the back of Mrs Lovett's house in working-class Footscray. When Alma falls pregnant, her daughter Molly is born in secret. As Molly grows up, there is a man who sometimes follows her on her way to school.

Anna meets Neil in 1952 at her parents' shack at Cockatoo. She later enters a Salvation Army home for unmarried mothers, but is determined to keep her baby.

Fitzroy, 1975. Student life. Things are different now, aren't they? Cathy and David are living together, determined not to get married. Against the background of the tumultuous events of the sacking of the Whitlam government, a new chapter is added to the family's story.

THE MOTHERS is a book about secrets. It interweaves the intimate lives of three generations of Australian women who learn that it's the stories we can't tell that continue to shape us and make us who we are. Rod Jones's remarkable, moving novel heralds a new direction for one of our best writers.

Rod Jones's first novel, Julia Paradise won the fiction award at the 1988 Adelaide Festival, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and was runner-up for the Prix Femina Étranger. It has been translated into ten languages and published throughout the world. His third novel, Billy Sunday, was the 1995 Age fiction Book of the Year and won the 1996 National Book Council Award for fiction. The Boston Globe called it ‘the Great American Novel'. The follow-up, Nightpictures, was shortlisted for the 1998 Miles Franklin Award. Swan Bay (2003), Jones's fifth and most recent novel, was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier's and Queensland Literary Awards. All of his books are short and complex, avowedly literary and sometimes controversial. Rod Jones has taught at various Australian institutions, including a four-year stint as a writer in residence at La Trobe University, and overseas.