Susan Rieger

Detroit, 1960. Lila Pereira is two years old when her angry, abusive father has her mother committed to an asylum. Lila never sees her mother again. Three decades later, having mustered everything she has–brains, charm, talent, blonde hair–Lila rises to the pinnacle of American media as the powerful, brilliant executive editor of The Washington Globe. Lila unapologetically prioritizes her career, leaving the rearing of her daughters to her generous husband, Joe. He doesn’t mind–until he does.

But Grace, their youngest daughter, feels abandoned. She wishes her mother would attend PTA meetings, not White House Correspondents dinners. As she grows up, she cannot shake her resentment. She wants out from under Lila’s shadow, yet the more she pushes back, the more Lila seems to shape her life. Grace becomes a successful reporter, even publishing a bestselling book about her mother, but, in the process of writing it, she realizes how little she knows about her own family. Did Lila’s mother, Grace’s grandmother, die in that asylum? Is refusal to look back the only way to create a future?  How can you ever be yourself, Grace wonders, if you don’t know where you came from?

Spanning generations, and populated by unforgettable, complex characters, Like Mother, Like Mother is an exhilarating, searching portrait of family, marriage, ambition, inheritance, power, the stories we inherit, and the lies we tell in order to become the people we believe we’re meant to be.

Susan Rieger is a graduate of Columbia Law School. She has worked as a residential college dean at Yale and an associate provost at Columbia. She has taught law to undergraduates at both schools and written frequently about the law for newspapers and magazines, and is the author of The Divorce Papers and The Heirs. She lives in New York City with her husband.