
In this virtuosic debut, a world-class soprano seeks to reclaim her voice from the curse that winds through her family tree. Since the difficult birth of her daughter, which collided tragically with the death of her beloved grandmother, renowned opera sensation Lulu can't bring herself to sing a note. Haunted by a curse that traces back through the women in her family, she fears that the loss of her remarkable talent and the birth of her daughter are somehow inexplicably connected. As Lulu tentatively embraces motherhood, she sifts through the stories she's inherited about her elusive, jazz-singer mother and the nearly mythic matriarch, her great-grandmother Greta. Each tale is steeped in the family's folkloric Polish tradition and haunted by the rusalka-a spirit that inspired Dvorak's classic opera. Merging elements from Bel Canto and Amy and Isabelle, The Daughters reveals through four generations the sensuous but precise physicality of both music and motherhood, and-most mysterious and seductive of all-the resonant ancestral lore that binds each mother to the one who came before.
Author

Adrienne Celt is a writer, cartoonist, and avid reader living in Tucson, AZ. Her debut novel THE DAUGHTERS won the 2015 PEN Southwest Book Award and was shortlisted for the 2016 Crawford Award. Her second novel, INVITATION TO A BONFIRE was a June 2018 Indie Next Pick, an Amazon Top 10 Book of the Month, and named a Best Book of the Year by the Financial Times. Her new novel, END OF THE WORLD HOUSE, will be published in spring 2022. Winner of a 2016 O. Henry Prize, her short fiction and essays have appeared in Esquire, The Kenyon Review, Epoch, Zyzzyva, Ecotone, The Tin House Open Bar, Prairie Schooner, Electric Literature, The Lit Hub, and many other places. Also a cartoonist, her comics have been published by The Rumpus, The Toast, Bat City Review, Broad! Magazine, The Southeast Review, and other places, as well as appearing on her weekly webcomic: loveamongthelampreys.com. A collection of her comics, APOCALYPSE HOW? AN EXISTENTIAL BESTIARY was published in 2016.