From acclaimed author Kelly Mustian comes a lyrical and haunting Southern story about memory, family secrets and fierce and fragile love.

For nearly 30 years, Nell has kept a childhood promise to never reveal what she and Evie found tucked inside a copy of Jane Eyre in their mother’s bookcase ― a record of Evie’s birth naming a stranger as her mother. But lately Nell has been haunted by hazy memories of their early life in Mississippi, years their reclusive mother has kept shrouded in secrecy.

Evie recalls nothing before their house on Clay Mountain in North Carolina, but Nell remembers abrupt moves, odd accommodations and the rainy night a man in a dark coat and a hat pulled low climbed their porch steps with a very little girl ― Evie ― and then left without her.

From a windswept ghost town long forgotten, to a river house in notorious Natchez Under-the-Hill, to a moody nightclub stage, Evie’s other mother emerges from the shadows of Depression-era Mississippi in a story of hardship and perseverance, betrayal and trust and unexpected redemption in a world in which the lines between heroes and culprits are not always clearly drawn.