The Lauras

'A writer of real gravitas and potency.' Ali Smith

'An extraordinary journey ... Engrossing, original and eloquent.' Helen Dunmore

'Elegiac and beautifully observed.' Observer

'Vivid and captivating.' Stylist

I didn’t realise 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 that she had ever wanted to be. I was wrong...

As Ma and Alex make their way from Virginia to California, each new state prompts stories and secrets of a life before Alex. Together they put to rest unsettled scores, heal old wounds, and search out lost friends. But Alex can't forget the life they've left behind.

Sara Taylor’s The Lauras just persuaded me even more that Taylor is a writer of real gravitas and potency. It feels, to read her, uncanny – a bit reminiscent of reading early Atwood three decades ago. She’s a writer whose talent, a fusion of sure-footed, calm and uncompromising, is both quiet and prodigious. - Ali Smith, Guardian, 'Best Books of 2016'

Sara Taylor is a writer with a strong sense of place … [The Lauras is] a work that looks to combine the epic sweep of America with an intimate study of a mother and her child … It is testament to Taylor’s taste and restraint that she never uses this unusual point to strain for cheap characterisation – Taylor’s affinity for the environment and landscape, so clear from The Shore, is evident again… Indeed the journey Taylor takes us on is often assured, interesting and full of poise. - Sunday Times

A terrific storyteller with a flawless narrative voice. - The Times