"Mothers of Sparta is a superbly written book, at times gently poetic, at times devastating. I was spellbound from start to finish."
—Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried.
In Mothers of Sparta, Dawn Davies writes like an avenging angel. Her stories are poetic, moving, provocative, and bracingly honest as she trains her lucid gaze on some of life’s deepest complexities: In the face of terror, betrayal, and impending loss, how do we love? And what does that love cost us? I’ve never read a book quite like this one, shot through with the light of an extraordinary talent and spirit.”
—Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance
If you’re looking for a parenting book, this is not it. This is not a treatise on how to be a mother. This is a book about a young girl who moves to a new town every couple of years; a misfit teenager who finds solace in a local music scene; an adrift twenty-something who drops out of college to pursue her dream of making cheesecake on a stick a successful business franchise (ah, the ideals of youth). Alone in a new city, she summons her inner strength as she holds the hand of a dying stranger. Davies is a woman who finds humor in difficult pregnancies and postpartum depression (after reading “Pie” you might never eat Thanksgiving dessert the same way). She is a divorcee who unexpectedly finds second love. She is a happily married suburban wife who nevertheless makes a mental list of all the men she would have slept with. And she is a parent who finds herself tested in ways she could never imagine. In stories that cut to the quick, Davies explores passion, loss, illness, pain, and joy, told from her singular, gimlet-eyed, hilarious perspective.
Mothers of Sparta is not a blow-by-blow of Davies’ life but rather an examination of the exquisite and often painful moments of a life, the moments we look back on and say, That one, that one mattered. Straddling the fence between humor and, well…not humor, Davies has written a book about what it’s like to try to carve a place for oneself in the world, no matter how unyielding the rock can be.
About Mothers of Sparta
If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in peoples' faces.
-- Paul Fussell
About Dawn
Dawn Davies is the author of Mothers of Sparta, and many published essays, poems, and stories. She lives on a farm in South Carolina.
