Mary and Inger

A tender literary fiction novel about a mother and daughter who steal back one last summer from time, illness, and the rules meant to keep them apart.

When Mary learns that her younger brother, armed with power of attorney, has barred her from taking their mother out of Memory Care for their cherished August trip to the lake, something in her refuses to surrender. In a moment of fierce love and reckless clarity, she whisks Inger away to a hidden lakeside refuge where time seems to hold its breath.

Across sunlit mornings, drifting memories and the fragile sweetness of borrowed days, mother and daughter reclaim a life that illness has tried to rewrite. But joy is threaded with risk, and their stolen escape carries consequences neither can outrun.

A luminous meditation on memory, loyalty and the wild choices we make for the people we cannot bear to lose, Mary and Inger captures the heartbreak and beauty of loving someone who is slowly slipping away.