Today, we are thrilled to share Kathryn Ordiway’s review of Jennifer Dupree’s debut novel, The Miraculous Flight of Owen Leach, from Apprentice House Press last month. Dupree’s fiction has been published in TMR’s anthology and New Voices, and she has been one of our most dedicated and trusted readers over the last few years. “Who gets to decide what makes a good mother?” Ordiway asks in her review. “This is the question at the heart of Owen Leach, Jennifer Dupree’s debut novel.” Read the full review at the link below.
I flew through The Miraculous Flight of Owen Leach in the days leading up to being induced for the birth of my first child. I highlighted the book in a frenzy. I’m writing the review on the other side, sleeping four-week-old by my side. I’ve reread the book. I’ve highlighted different passages, found different lines and paragraphs that resonate. I love and hate the two central mothers in equal measure, as I see myself in both of them.
Who gets to decide what makes a good mother? This is the question at the heart of Owen Leach, Jennifer Dupree’s debut novel. Readers meet two: Rose, age forty-one, married mother of one, and Sophia, age nineteen, single mother to Owen. Rose does the things society says mothers and wives should do: Worry, long for another child, rub her husband’s shoulders when he’s stressed, ignore her own pain, cook steaks and bake pies and make Halloween costumes. Sophia hides in her apartment when her son flies out of an open window. Rose, miraculously, catches him.
