ALL MY WILD MOTHERS: MOTHERHOOD LOSS/ APOTHECARY GARDEN (PB)

This moving memoir is a profound exploration of grief, identity and rediscovery. At seven months pregnant, Victoria Bennett was looking forward to new motherhood and all that was to come. But everything changed when her eldest sister died in a canoeing accident. Five years later, struggling with grief, the demands of being a parent-carer for her young son, and the impact of deeper austerity, life feels very different to the future she had imagined. She and her son move to a new social housing estate in rural Cumbria and set about transforming the rubble around them into a wild apothecary garden where they grow daisy, for resilience and dandelion, for strength against adversity, sowing thistle, to lift melancholy and borage, to bring hope in dark and difficult times.