In the spir­it of Fierce Attach­ments, Bet­tyville, and The End of Your Life Book Club, acclaimed nov­el­ist Bri­an Mor­ton deliv­ers a mov­ing, dark­ly fun­ny mem­oir of his mother’s vibrant life and the many ways in which their tight, tumul­tuous rela­tion­ship was refash­ioned in her twi­light years. Tasha Mor­ton is a force of nature: a bril­liant edu­ca­tor who’s left her mark on gen­er­a­tions of stu­dents — and also a whirl­wind of a moth­er, intru­sive, chaot­ic, oppres­sive­ly devot­ed, and irre­press­ible. For decades, her son Bri­an has kept her at a self-pro­tec­tive dis­tance, but when her health begins to fail, he knows it’s time to assume respon­si­bil­i­ty for her care. Even so, he’s not pre­pared for what awaits him, as her refusal to accept her own fragili­ty leads to a series of epic out­bursts and alter­ca­tions that are some­times fright­en­ing, some­times wild­ly com­ic, and some­times both. Clear-eyed, lov­ing, and brim­ming with dark humor, Tasha is an explo­ration of what sons learn from their moth­ers, a stark look at the impos­si­ble task of car­ing for an elder­ly par­ent in a coun­try whose unof­fi­cial mot­to is ​“you’re on your own,” and a med­i­ta­tion on the treach­er­ous busi­ness at the heart of every fam­i­ly — the busi­ness of try­ing to hon­or our­selves with­out for­sak­ing our par­ents, and our par­ents with­out for­sak­ing our­selves. Above all, Tasha is a vivid and sur­pris­ing por­trait of an unfor­get­table woman.