A mother’s love longed for in a new world. Growing up on a farm in early twentieth-century Hungary, Irene knew only joy and the deep, enduring love of her grandmother. As. the first world war ends, a letter arrives summoning Irene to join her long-absent mother, Mary, in America. Irene's odyssey takes her from security to pressing danger with her embittered mother. As the new world exerts its romantic pull on Irene, Mary's darkness and family secrets begin to reveal themselves. Irene must choose whether to pursue her dreams of higher education and independence or risk being consumed by her mother's broken dreams. Inspired by his mother's oral history and stories, Dennis Andrulis's Motherlands offers a moving portrait of the immigrant experience and the enduring hope for love and belonging in a new land.