Leah McLaren

A daughter’s remarkable and unflinching exploration of the unconventionally intimate relationship she shared with her mother—a brilliant and charismatic woman haunted by past trauma. 

When her daughter is eight, Leah McLaren’s mother abruptly fled her life as rural house wife in search a glamorous career in the city. In the chaotic years that follow, Cecily lurches from one apartment, job and toxic romance to the next. In a home without rules or emotional boundaries, Leah and Cecily become confidants—a state of enmeshment that suits them both. Their bond is loving but also marked by casual indifference. Cecily’s self-described parenting style of “benign neglect” is a hilarious party joke, but for her daughter it’s reality.

In Leah’s first year of high school, Cecily makes a disclosure that will forever alter their relationship: From 12 to 15, Cecily confides, she was the lover of her 45-year-old married pony club instructor. The trauma of the “Horseman,” she explains, is the reason for all her ill-conceived life choices, including marriage and motherhood itself which she now bitterly regrets.

For years after, into adulthood, Leah is haunted by the specter of the Horseman. He is the nameless darkness she observes in Cecily and worse yet, recognizes in herself. Eventually she sets out to discover truth of what became of her mother’s rapist. Leah believes she will find solace in the facts, but first she must grasp a deeper truth: That this story—her story—is not the Horseman’s after all.

A riveting and devastating portrait of mother and daughter, Where You End and I Begin explores the way intergenerational trauma is shared between women and how acts of harm can be confused with acts of love.

A Memoir: A Mother-Daughter Love Story

Where You End and I Begin

What if the only way you could get out of your marriage was to become the perfect husband? Nick and Maya Wakefield's relationship has been in crisis since Maya left her high-powered legal career to stay home with their now 3-year-old twins. Today she feels invisible, anxious, and under-appreciated, and Nick has checked out of family life. Sex is a distant memory and the love is gone. A workaholic and a consummate flirt, Nick has decided he wants out. But he balks when their old friend, a divorce attorney, shows him that as sole breadwinner, he stands to lose the most. Together, he and his friend hatch a plan: Nick will act like an ideal husband and father in order to ease the pain of leaving and make out better in court. So he encourages Maya to go back to work, spends time with the kids, and even takes her on a vacation without them. But with his cynical ruse comes a surprising change of heart. Nick is astonished to find his actual emotions match his act and now his marriage is truly on the mend. That is, until Maya finds out, and Nick's world falls to pieces. Now his only hope of saving his family is to prove to his wife that he really is the man he was pretending to be. A BETTER MAN is a sharply observant novel of the pitfalls of marriage and success, and how one couple must lose it all before they can hope to find their way back.

A Better Man

Meredith Moore is the perfect continuity girl. An on-set script supervisor, she is the error catcher, the one who makes sure every take matches seamlessly with the one that came before it. But when Meredith wakes up on her 35th birthday with a sudden acute yearning for a baby, her personal sense of continuity is thrown into flux. Determined not to marry, she impulsively flees humdrum Canada and heads to London to reunite with her notoriously eccentric mother, Irma, and accept a job on a famous producer's film. Her covert plan: find a man with good genes, seduce him, and have a child--all without him knowing, of course. But in her quest to become pregnant on her own terms, she will accidentally discover a web of secrets that will change the way she envisions both her professional life and the nature of love.

The Continuity Girl

Maya wants Nick to be less of a workaholic, to come home earlier, to spend some time with his children. Nick wants a divorce. With his mind made up, Nick is determined to leave. But it comes as a shock to realize how much it will cost him to walk away. As a stay-at-home mum, Maya is entitled to everything. Then an unlikely solution presents itself: Nick needs to act like a better man. If he plays the part of a good husband and father, Maya will become happier and more self-sufficient - and Nick's pay-out to her will be far cheaper. But as Nick pretends to be a better man he becomes one. He remembers why he fell in love with Maya, and what a great couple they can be. Everything seems to be back on track. Until Maya finds out exactly what Nick had been planning...

Leah McLaren

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