A Robin's Pageant is the story of three generations of women: Louella, her daughter, Margaret, and her granddaughter, Sarah. A story of love and loss, it lays bare the intricate joys and heartaches of motherhood, and explores the extraordinary undercurrents of ordinary, everyday life. In 1922, widowed and pregnant at nineteen after only two months of marriage, Louella gives up her baby to her sister and then never sees her son again. The repercussions of this decision define who she is when she becomes a wife and mother again twenty years later. Louella never reveals her first experience of motherhood to her daughter, and she later deeply regrets this secret.Inevitably shaped by Louella's early loss, Margaret and Sarah connect to the world in very different ways, with unique views on the meanings of their own childhood experiences. Both women explore the challenges and mysteries of motherhood, Margaret looking back, and Sarah, pregnant for the first time, anticipating.Just before her baby is born, Sarah discovers a long-hidden letter from her grandmother, explaining Louella's early experiences. The revelation of Louella's loss clarifies and heals much of the tension between the three generations of women. When Sarah's baby is born, an unexpected twist brings the novel full circle. Through one family's story, A Robin's Pageant illuminates the inevitable combinations of love, joy, grief, and dramatic experience that define our humanity.
