{"product_id":"hand-that-first-held-mine","title":"Hand That First Held Mine","description":"\u003cp\u003eLexie Sinclair is plotting an extraordinary life for herself.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHedged in by her parents' genteel country life, she plans her escape to London. There, she takes up with Innes Kent, a magazine editor who wears duck-egg blue ties and introduces her to the thrilling, underground world of bohemian, post-war Soho. She learns to be a reporter, to know art and artists, to embrace her life fully and with a deep love at the center of it. She creates many lives--all of them unconventional. And when she finds herself pregnant, she doesn't hesitate to have the baby on her own terms.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLater, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood. She doesn't recognize herself: she finds herself walking outside with no shoes; she goes to the restaurant for lunch at nine in the morning; she can't recall the small matter of giving birth. But for her boyfriend, Ted, fatherhood is calling up lost memories, with images he cannot place.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs Ted's memories become more disconcerting and more frequent, it seems that something might connect these two stories-- these two women-- something that becomes all the more heartbreaking and beautiful as they all hurtle toward its revelation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The Hand That First Held Mine \"is a spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood. Like her acclaimed \"The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox,\" it is a \"breathtaking, heart-breaking creation.\"*And it is a gorgeous inquiry into the ways we make and unmake our lives, who we know ourselves to be, and how even our most accidental legacies connect us.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e*The Washington Post Book World\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Maggie O'Farrell","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46621580689644,"sku":"9780547423180","price":20.26,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0684\/1791\/3068\/files\/9780547423180.jpg?v=1751604890","url":"https:\/\/intl.allstora.com\/products\/hand-that-first-held-mine","provider":"Allstora","version":"1.0","type":"link"}