"Elegantly written and compulsively readable, The Light Through the Branches bravely plumbs a difficult motherdaughter relationship with honesty, insight, and grace. Kate's lifelong desire to have a loving relationship with her motherand a frank reckoning of their pastspeaks to a particular and beautiful form of human folly: never giving up on connection, on love." Michelle Huneven, author of Search "Through the eyes of a character as memorable as the title of this singular work, Anne Matlack Evans has balanced the deep impact of childhood trauma with the desire to understand the mother who allowed it to happen. The Light Through the Branches takes uncomfortable turns, but it never surrenders its humanity. In fact, that is its distinctive strength. Her characters are eminently human, complex, flawed, and resilient, and we see pieces of ourselves within them. With clear, lyrical writing and a firm grasp on what it means to transcend the sins of the past, Evans has created a work that merits multiple reads." Greg Fields, author of Through the Waters and the Wild; 2022 Winner, Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction "At the core of this deeply affecting novel is the troubled relationship between intelligent, artistic Kate and her emotionally detached mother, Elizabeth. As Kate attends to Elizabeth's dementiafraught last days, the book weaves together two compelling timelines, one that follows a challenging motherdaughter road trip, and one that takes us further into the past, where we bear witness to an abusive family history Elizabeth would sooner ignore. With lucid, precise language, Evans draws us into Kate's journey from a proscriptive 1950s childhood through the radical changes of the next decades. As she explores the farreaching legacy of sexual abuse and stunning parental betrayal, she suggests a daughter's hardwon insightinto the frustrations that made Elizabeth such a complicated influence, and the unexpected resources of love."Angela Pneumann, Aut...