Nora • The Mother
Nora makes a living questioning other people’s accounts. Now she must decide what she is willing to say about her own family.
The Favor Was Supposed to Be Simple.
Nora Pell earns her living noticing when a car’s story doesn’t add up. When her oldest friend, Dana, asks for an alibi until after eleven, the favor includes Dana’s car: Nora must say it was in her driveway, too.
After twenty-two years of friendship, Nora agrees.
A detective’s questions about a cyclist struck on a Minnesota road soon make that answer harder to live with. Nora’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Evie, was supposed to be studying with Dana’s son that night. Evie doesn’t want to drive.
The cyclist is the brother of Evie’s chemistry teacher, Jo Kasprzak. Jo wants answers—and still has a mother to care for and a classroom to return to. Nora wants to protect her daughter’s future. Evie needs to speak for herself.
Across the year that follows, courtrooms and college plans, paid work and family debts force choices that telling the truth cannot settle.
Until After Eleven is a family novel about a long friendship under strain and the cost of deciding what is best for someone you love.
