Background īennett began writing the novel when she was 17 years old. The book includes themes of Christianity in the context of the Black church, shame, and motherhood. In her adulthood Nadia has to return to her hometown for a family emergency and reckon with her past. Years later, her Christian friend Aubrey begins dating and then marries Luke.

She has an abortion and leaves her hometown to attend University of Michigan. Living in Southern California, 17-year-old Nadia, grieving her mother's suicide, becomes pregnant by her boyfriend Luke, a local pastor's son. A film adaptation is being produced by Kerry Washington's production company Simpson Street. The Mothers, released on Octoby Riverhead Books, received critical acclaim and was a New York Times bestseller.

The book follows Nadia, a young woman who left her Southern California hometown years ago after the suicide of her mother and is called back to attend to a family emergency. He will climb atop her shoulders and her body will sag from the weight of loving him.The Mothers is a debut novel by Brit Bennett. A tragic woman hooks into an ain't-shit man, or worse, lets him hook into her. No shame in loving an ain't-shit man, long as you get it out of your system good and early. It's exciting, loving someone who can never love you back. Nowadays, a young man fools around with any girl who's willing and if she gets in trouble - well, you just ask Luke Sheppard what these young men do next.Ī girl nowadays has to get nice and close to tell if her man ain't shit and by then, it might be too late. When we were girls, a man who wanted to court us sipped coffee in the living room with our parents first. Swaggering around downtown, drunk and swearing, fighting outside nightclubs, smoking reefer in their mamas' basements. But nowadays? Most of these young men seem ain't-shit to us. The type of man our brothers warned us about because he was going nowhere and he would treat us bad on the way to that nowhere. At pool halls and juke joints, speakeasies and rent parties and sometimes in church, snoring in the back pew. “You used to be able to spot an ain't-shit man a lot easier.

Brit bennett's the mothers