Family Obscura by Suzanne Ketchum Adams

 

When Sally Crane and her two sisters receive a decades-old photo of their long-dead mother from a perfect stranger, questions abound. Who is that man seated next to their young mother? Is the baby in the photo one of the sisters, or is it a long-lost brother? And who is this stranger who sent the photo?

 

Sally, sober but on the verge of losing her faith in AA, haunted by her own drunken transgression against her younger sister, and questioning her own sexual orientation, latches on to the photo as the key to understanding her own troubled past. While her sisters react with caution and denial, the stranger who sent the photo shows up without warning, weaving herself into the fabric of the Cranes’ family life. As each sister confronts her perception of the past, their mother, and each other, an answer to the mystery of the photograph begins to emerge from an unexpected source.

 

Family Obscura is a voicey, character-driven, upmarket family saga of 93,000 words, featuring a multi-POV, dual-timeline structure with LGBTQ+ representation. Like Chorus by Rebecca Kauffman, Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur, Like Mother, Like Mother by Susan Rieger and The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, Family Obscura examines the collision of memory, secrets, and sibling relations in the wake of a mysteriously absent mother.