About the Book
Baby’s Breath
by Lynne Hugo and Anna Tuttle Villegas (Sep 27, 2000)
BABY’S BREATH, a second collaborative novel with Anna Villegas, is a story about a hidden pregnancy, an abandoned baby, and how the love between a mother and daughter ultimately saves and redeems them after an act most consider unthinkable and unforgivable. We wrote about our collaborative process for Fiction Writer Magazine, “Two Women, One Story.”
Baby’s Breath was translated into French (Un Lien Si Fragile), and was a Book Of The Month Club selection in France.
Description
Baby’s Breath is a novel about a mother-daughter relationship in the crucible of a horrific act. The daughter, Alyssa, hides a pregnancy, gives birth in secret and abandons her newborn in a subway station. Does this sound familiar? Of course it does: the idea for the novel came from contemporary newspaper headlines. Anna Tuttle Villegas and I noticed how many accounts mentioned that the girls who did this–like the “prom mom,” for example– were considered “good girls,” and close to their middle-class parents. Both of us are parents of college-age daughters; both of us thought “my daughter couldn’t do that,” even as we had to realize that the mothers of the girls who’d done it had believed exactly that.
We began to research the phenomenon. We talked to lawyers, doctors, a women’s jail warden. We read trial transcripts, paying close attention to what psychiatrists had had to say. We studied the interviews and news accounts and simply tried to understand. Baby’s Breath is the result of that effort made into literature. Our hope is that we take the reader on a cathartic journey to understanding even as s/he is captivated by a well-told story.
Comments & Reviews
Comment on Baby’s Breath:
“Baby’s Breath provides insight into how this heartbreaking tragedy might occur. Readers will gain a new perspective of the effect newborn abandonment has on the people directly involved, as well as on society as a whole.”
Lilly Riordan, president, Safe Place for Newborns, Minneapolis, Minnesota
“Baby’s Breath is more like a breath of reality. Alyssa’s story of denial is all too familiar a scenario for young mothers desperate to hide an unwanted newborn.”
Jodi Brooks. founder. A Secret Safe Place for Newborns, Mobile, Alabama, and reporter for WPMI-TV
“Who will ever understand why a baby dies, simply for being born? We must open our hearts first and then our minds will follow. This book gives us the key to unlocking the heart of anyone who has been a child or a parent.”
Gigi Kelly, founder, Baskets for Babies, Inc., Southwestern Pennsylvania.
“I found that once I started reading it was hard to stop. It was as though I was viewing our babies’ stories as they unfolded. It is painful but full of truths that need to be shared.”
Debi Faris, founder, Garden of Angels, Southern California
“I believe this book will promote a greater awareness of the increasing problem of newborn abandonment and infanticide as well as increase public support for programs and legislation designed to help prevent it.”
Ohio State Representative Cheryl Winkler, 34th District
“Baby’s Breath confirms what I have known, that women who abandon their babies are troubled, scared and confused. That is why I authored legislation allowing them to leave their newborns at hospitals anonymously, without fear of prosecution for child abandonment. This lets their mothers make a responsible choice and gives their innocent newborns a second chance.”
California Assemblyman Ken Maddox, 68th District
Review by PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
August 21, 2000
Lynne reading and signing
at The Odyssey Bookstore in
S. Hadley, MA after the publication
of Baby’s Breath
A mother-daughter relationship is severely tested in this chilling novel about infanticide by the authors of Swimming Lessons. Single mother Leah Pacey misses her daughter, Alvssa (“Allie”), when Allie goes off to college in Berkeley. But she feels a new lease on life, too, and gives up her real estate job in Philadelphia to paint full-time. Meanwhile, Allie is undergoing a very different transformation. After a brief, fumbling fling, she discovers she is pregnant, but fails to fully acknowledge her condition, even to herself. It is clear from the beginning that there is something very wrong with this reclusive honors student. She sleeps for 12 to 14 hours at a stretch, is adamant about never returning to Philly (although she does end up going home for a brief Thanksgiving visit) and moves into her own apartment but doesn’t leave a forwarding address. Allie carries her secret pregnancy to full term and delivers her baby in a BART subway station; then, in a state of delirium, she checks into a filthy rooming house. When Allie’s kindly neighbor notices that Allie is missing, she contacts Leah. Allie is arrested when she returns to the BART station where she left her baby, who has since been found dead, and Allie is charged with murder. Leah’s and Allie’s stories are told in counterpoint, as the novel builds up to the climactic trial scenes. The novel’s two central voices are so seamlessly interwoven, one would never suspect that the authors created this moving and disturbing novel via long distance correspondence. (Sept.)(PW August 21, 2000)
