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From Guardian First Book Award-shortlisted and Baileys Prize-nominated author Sara Taylor comes a dazzling new work exploring identity and relationships, set against a rolling backdrop of the North American landscape.

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´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.

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"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´

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Sara Taylor was born and raised in rural Virginia. She has a BFA from Randolph College and an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. She is currently chipping away at a double-focus PhD in censorship and fiction at UEA. She spends her time between Norwich and Reading. The Shore, her debut novel, was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and longlisted for the Baileys Women´s Prize for Fiction. In 2015, Sara was shortlisted for the Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year Award.

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