Scar Jewelry — Sue Perry

What do we really know about our parents or the ways they shape us? For twins Deirdre and Langston, 20, the answer is: not enough. Their father died before they were born and now, when a car crash puts their mother in a coma, the siblings suddenly realize they don't even know whom to notify. They've never questioned how little they know about their mother. Like many offspring, they assume there's not much to know.

It's been a rough year for narrator Deirdre, who has stalled out after personal setbacks she won't discuss - not even with Langston - and who fears she is just like their mother, a woodwork dweller. Langston never faces such worries. Her twin in name only, his dynamic style and achievements have launched him across the continent into a top university and flourishing social life - all of which he will compromise as they unravel their mother's past.

As Deirdre and Langston question friends and acquaintances, snoop, and hack emails, a portrait emerges that barely resembles the mother they know. For starters, they discover that their father died four years after their birth. Why manufacture such a lie? Proliferating questions and unsettling answers await them before they finally learn why. As they come to understand choices their mother made that swerved their life paths as well as hers, they must ultimately reconsider their mother, their memories, and themselves.

Set in the present and in the early days of punk, this work of literary fiction has elements of mystery, psychology, family drama, and rites of passage across two generations, in a setting that vividly evokes southern California, then and now.