The White Hare

Johnson’s (The Tenth Gift; The Sea Gate) writing is deliberate and lyrical in this novel about mothers and daughters that also speaks to readers yearning for connection and struggling with feelings of displacement. It’s 1954, and Mila and her five-year-old daughter Janey are looking for a fresh start. After a disastrous and humiliating breakup with Janey’s father, Mila, her mother Magdalena, and Janey relocate from London to the western reaches of Cornwall in the White Valley, where a large house, abandoned since the war, will be their new project. Magda has her heart set on turning it into a grand guest house by the sea, no matter the unsettling local rumors about the property. Mila feels trapped between her mother’s increasing demands and her inclination to nurture her daughter’s growing sense of self as well as her own. Janey’s vivid imagination, her connection to her stuffed rabbit, and local lore about the power of the natural world all coalesce to illuminate the power of place and history.