HER ONE REGRET

Freitas—whose previous novel focused on one woman’s decision whether to have a child—offers the intertwining stories of several young Rhode Island mothers who experience various combinations of satisfaction and regret over their choices.

What sets this entry into the genre of motherhood fiction apart is that Freitas has created an engrossing mystery: Was successful real estate agent Lucy Mendoza kidnapped in the parking lot of a Narragansett Beach supermarket or did she abandon her baby, Emma, there? Freitas plants hints pointing in a lot of directions, most of them red herrings, leading toward twisty solutions to not one but several disappearances. At the same time, the novel lays out Freitas’ thesis about unfair attitudes toward women as mothers almost too neatly through other mothers’ reactions. Diana Gonzalez, a retired detective consulting on the case, notices parallels between Lucy’s case and those of two other women, Maeve O’Neil and Joanna D’Angelo. Years ago, Maeve returned eight days after having vanished, only to drown with her child a year later. Joanna has been missing for the last three years but has received little attention thanks to her unsympathetic profile—she was having an affair, among other things. Meanwhile, Lucy’s best friend, Michelle Carvalho, faces a moral and emotional crisis. A devoted mother, Michelle doesn’t want to believe Lucy would forsake Emma. She puts off telling the police that Lucy confided her wish that she’d never had a baby. When Michelle’s husband goes behind her back and tells the press, the public assumes Lucy is a bad mother who ran off. But not graphic artist Julia Gallo, who empathizes with Lucy. Julia loves her baby but hates being a mother. Joining the support group to which Lucy belonged, Julia finds guidance and a solution Freitas seems to like, although it would probably be deemed unacceptable for a male character. (Even decent husbands get short shrift here.) Freitas, who has been public about choosing not to have children, works hard to capture ambivalences in motherhood and marriage.

While maternal regret may not be the taboo subject Freitas claims, book clubs should love her satisfying page-turner.