Celebrating Women’s History Month
On Bookshelves Today!
Over the years, I have read quite a few books featuring children or husbands of women who abandoned their families. Rarely, if ever, are the motives or traumas of the mothers examined. Not so with Ilona Bannister’s When I Ran Away. This novel focuses squarely on Gigi Harrison, a wife and mother we meet as she leaves her family and hides out in a rundown hotel. The narrative flashes back to when and how the couple met and interweaves Gigi’s personal backstory: the death of her brother on 9/11 and her subsequent adoption of her nephew. Marrying her husband Harry supported her grieving and helped her raise her adopted son. But, when Harry moves the family across the ocean and Gigi has a traumatic pregnancy and delivery, she finds her suffering too hard to bear, leading to her departure. Bannister draws Gigi as a complete character, with all that entails. A raw but nuanced look at the emotional toll of grief, womanhood, motherhood, and class.
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