Frida Liu is a single mother who, exhausted and alone, has a lapse in judgment one day parenting her child. That decision leads to a child welfare trial, where the state sentences her to a year at school for mothers, where government educators will retrain Frida and other mothers they deem unworthy how to be good mothers in the eyes of the state. Best described to me as “1984 for mothers,” The School for Good Mothers is a terrifying look at an overreaching government that feels all too real today and the lengths that parents will go to in order to be with their children. It will both disturb you and make you think!
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan, (List Price: $27.00, Simon & Schuster, 9781982156121, January 2022)
Reviewed by Beth Seufer Buss, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina