"I didn't realize my mother was a person until I was thirteen years old and she pulled me out of bed, put me in the back of her car, and we left home and my dad with no explanations. I thought that Ma was all that she was and all she had ever wanted to be. I was wrong. As we made our way across North America, returning to the places where she'd lived as a kid in foster care and as a teenager on the run, repaying debts and keeping promises, I learned who she was in her life-before-me and the secrets she had kept--even from herself. But when life on the road began to feel normal I couldn't forget the home we'd left behind, couldn't deny that, just like my mother, I too had unfinished business. The Lauras is an extraordinary, propulsive story and a stunning exploration of the relationship between a mother and a child. From the green foothills of Tennessee to the swamps of Mississippi, and the bright lights of Las Vegas to the forests of Vancouver Island, this novel is absorbing and intimate, told by a significant voice in literary fiction."--Provided by the publisher.