Inception meets the transformational madness of early motherhood when a new mother ventures into the multiverse to save her missing child, in a mind-bending novel that turns the joys and anxieties of parenthood into an epic quest.
THE POSSIBILITIES: A Novel
by Yael Goldstein-Love
Random House, July 2023
(via The Gernert Company)
Hannah is having a bad day. A bad month. A bad year? That feels terrible to admit, since her son Jack was born just eight months ago, and she loves him more than anything. But ever since his harrowing birth, she can’t shake the feeling that it could have gone the other way. That her baby might not have made it. Terrifying visions from different paths her life could have taken begin to disrupt her cozy, claustrophobic days with Jack, destablizing her marriage, and making her husband concerned for her mental health. Are the strange things Hannah is seeing just new mom anxiety, or is something truly weird and sinister afoot? What if Hannah really did unlock something she wasn’t supposed to during childbirth? When Hannah’s worst nightmare comes true and Jack disappears from his crib, she discovers that her reeling mind has extraordinary powers that she must tap into in order to save her child: She has the ability to enter the multiverse—and she must visit different versions of her life while holding onto what is most important to her in this one to bring her child back home. From the intimate joys of parenthood to the cosmic awe of the multiverse, THE POSSIBILITIES is an ingenious and wildly suspenseful novel that dares to stare down into the dizzying depths of maternal love, vulnerability, and strength.
Yael Goldstein-Love is a psychotherapist working toward her doctorate in clinical psychology. She is the co-founder and Editorial Director of Plympton, a literary studio that innovates at the intersection of writing and technology, and has worked with luminaries such as Roxanne Gay, Min Jin Lee, Adam Haslett, and Joyce Carol Oates, among many others. A graduate of Harvard University, where she studied philosophy of science, she lives with her four-year-old son and their cat in Berkeley, California.
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