Like Mother, Like Mother

Like Mother, Like Mother (2024) is Susan Rieger’s third novel. She earned her JD from Columbia University and taught undergraduate law at Columbia and Yale University. The text follows three generations of Pereira family women as they navigate marriages, sibling relationships, personal traumas, and professional successes. Their relationships with each other highlight the inescapability of maternal legacies, even when one’s mother is physically absent. The text also explores the significance of women’s personal and professional fulfillment and the impact of unresolved trauma on their ability to achieve success in all areas of their lives. The rights to adapt Like Mother, Like Mother for television have been purchased by Universal Content Productions (UCP), and Sue Naegle and Ali Krug will executive produce.

This guide refers to The Dial Press first hardcover edition (2024).

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of mental illness, child abuse, rape, pregnancy loss or termination, suicidal ideation and self-harm, and emotional abuse.

Plot Summary

The novel follows three generations of women across distinct timelines, exploring their struggles with identity, motherhood, and survival. The narrative is divided into three parts: Lila’s life and career, Grace’s search for Zelda, and Zelda’s secret second life as Frida. Lila, a driven journalist, is the daughter of Zelda and the mother of Grace, whose novel about Zelda’s disappearance prompts her to uncover the truth. The book shifts between past and present, revealing how each woman fought for autonomy in a world that sought to define them by their circumstances. Grace narrates most of the book. 

Lila Pereira retires at age 65, then dies of cancer two months later. Her youngest daughter, Grace, has felt guilty since publishing her book The Lost Mother the year before. Mourners include Lila’s sister, Clara; her husband, Joe; and her long-time publisher, Doug Marshall. Stella and Ava, Lila’s two older daughters, look like her and have her last name. Grace looks like Joe and has his last name, Maier. Lila claimed to know nothing about being a mother, in part because her mother, Zelda, disappeared when she was two. Joe raised their girls. Lila’s father, Aldo, was so abusive and hateful that neither Lila nor her siblings knew what became of Zelda. Aldo committed her to a psychiatric hospital in 1960, and the children never saw Zelda again. His mother, Bubbe, kept the house and took care of the children. Aldo told them their mother was dead after the fact. Lila was too young to remember her, but Polo, Lila’s brother, said she cried a lot. Aldo hit the children after Zelda left. Bubbe claimed Zelda’s jewelry, but when Lila left for college, she took it back, always wearing her mother’s delicate gold necklace.

Lila says she would provoke Aldo so he would hit her instead of Polo or Clara. Lila and Joe met at school, and his mother, Frances, planned their wedding. Joe took a clerkship in Cincinnati, and they spent two years there. Joe and Lila then moved to DC. Lila was hired by Jim Bramble at The Globe, and she impressed Doug Marshall, its publisher. Polo, who became a firefighter, died in 2000 while attempting to rescue two children. Clara once told Lila he was always trying to save her, metaphorically, from Aldo. Two years later, Lila replaced Bramble as executive director. Josh Morgan, a colleague Lila once called out for groping her in a meeting, protested, but Doug threatened to fire him. When Lila started working 12-hour days and sleeping in her office, Joe asked for a separation, but they drifted back together.

In 2016, Charles Webb, Jr., won the presidency on electoral college votes. Lila investigated, and Josh called her, wanting in; she refused. Later, Lila learned he lied about where he went to college, plagiarized articles, and embellished his expenses, so she forced him to resign. Grace’s novel, The Lost Mother, came out in 2022, two months before Lila’s retirement. Grace didn’t investigate Zelda’s life but imagined a new one for her, post-psychiatric hospital. She also created an affair between Lila and Doug, calling the book “fictional nonfiction” and revealing her own affair with Josh. Not long after retirement, Lila learned she had stage IV lung cancer. A week after the funeral, Joe gave Grace a letter from Lila, asking her to find Zelda and share her story.

The second part of the narrative focuses on Grace Maier’s young adulthood. She attended the University of Chicago and became close with her brilliant roommate, Ruth. Grace invited Ruth home for Thanksgiving, and everyone, including Joe’s mother, Frances, loved her. Grace visited Ruth’s family in Florida, and Ruth confessed to taking a DNA test to learn her father’s identity. His name is Robert E. Lee Bates, and the company matched her with his brother, Jeff. Bobby Lee’s wife, Jacqui, called to say Ruth shouldn’t contact them. Joe told Grace he and Lila were separating. When Grace asked Lila if she had an affair with Doug, Lila neither confirmed nor denied it, but she and Doug slept together. 

When Grace and Ruth graduated, Ruth wanted to earn money and have fun, then start a podcast about family histories called Elephant Memories. She took a job with Joe. Grace became a correspondent for a weekly Washington publication. Ruth heard from Jefferson Davis Bates, her paternal uncle, who wrote that Bobby Lee was a “young sinner” when she was conceived. Ruth regretted taking the DNA test. She spends two years at Joe’s firm, then goes west to ski. She visited her old English teacher, Mrs. Goldsmith, and hit it off with her son, Nico.

Grace wanted to report on the rich. She took a job at The New Yorkist, eventually covering the Russian oligarchs. Her first article gained attention, and Josh Morgan called her to meet for lunch. He asked her out again a couple of days later and sent flowers. The next time, they went to a hotel. At Nico and Ruth’s engagement party, Xander fell for Grace. Jacqui Bates called asking Ruth’s gran how they could let her marry a Jew. Grace decided to start researching Zelda, believing Zelda fled to save herself. She insisted that Lila believed in Zelda’s death only because the alternative is too painful. Ruth moved to New York with Nico, and Grace’s affair with Morgan ends. Doug Marshall started a podcast, The Press Gang, in 2020. Doug hired Ruth. Xander fell in love with Grace, but she was more reserved.

The novel’s third part focuses on Zelda Pereira through Grace’s search in the present. A month after Lila’s memorial, Grace begins the search for Zelda. Stella and Ava look for Zelda’s birth and death certificates and marriage license. They tell Grace to interview Aldo and do DNA testing. Frances plans Ruth and Nico’s wedding, and Doug conducts the ceremony five months after Lila’s death. The wedding animates Frances, who is ill, and Grace tells Xander she loves him. Doug’s podcast group airs Elephant Memories. Grace now hopes Zelda did die because she’ll “hate” her otherwise. Grace and Xander get engaged, and Grace agrees to pay Aldo $300 for an interview. He is vicious and pleased to have outlived Lila. Clara sends Grace a box of Bubbe’s things. Stella and Ava learn that Zelda’s given name is Pessoa. They also find a pair of birth certificates, one for Zelda Pessoa and one for Frida Pessoa. Stella guesses Zelda changed her name after she ran away. Later, they find a marriage certificate for Frida and Herbert Berman from 1960, the year Zelda was hospitalized.

In 1960, Hilda Pessoa presented her niece, Frida, to Herbert’s mother, saying Frida had lived like a nun since her parents’ death. Herbert proposed to her on their third date; they married quickly and honeymooned in Bermuda. Frida returned pregnant. Their son, Dennis, was born six months later. He spent a month in an incubator, and Frida had a daughter, Heidi, soon after. Frida was not a hands-on mother. At her request, Herbert sent her to college, and she worked for his company. Dennis and Heidi earned JDs, but Dennis still wonders why Heidi was always smarter; she says it’s because he was premature. When Herbert dies, Frida retires and moves into assisted living. The facility’s book club soon chooses The Lost Mother, debating whether “Zelina” died or ran away; Frida sides with the “runaway” contingent. Dennis takes a DNA test.

Clara agrees to a DNA test. She learns that Dennis is her full brother. He is shaken by the news, and Heidi assumes he was adopted, googling Clara and buying Grace’s book. She takes her own DNA test and tries to talk to Frida, but Frida admits nothing. Heidi’s results show that she and Dennis have the same mother but different fathers. Dennis asks Clara to meet, somewhat devastated about his father. Heidi takes Clara and Grace to meet Frida, who, at 88, claims not to recognize their names. Eventually, Frida admits that, before Aldo committed her, she tried to die by suicide; after her second attempt, she woke up in the psychiatric hospital. A doctor helped her to escape, and, pregnant with Dennis, Frida married Herbert two months later.

Now, Heidi believes Dennis suffered oxygen deprivation in utero due to their mother’s attempts to die. Frida denies missing her children, having regrets, or experiencing guilt. Grace moves in with Xander and gets pregnant. Frances is thrilled to plan their small wedding. Joe gives her Lila’s gold necklace, and she has a daughter that July. Frida dies two weeks later, though since becoming a mother, Grace feels more empathy for her.