Book Spotlight: The Promise Between Us by Barbara Claypole White

Book Summary:

Metal artist Katie Mack is living a lie. Nine years ago she ran away from her family in Raleigh, North Carolina, consumed by the irrational fear that she would harm Maisie, her newborn daughter. Over time she’s come to grips with the mental illness that nearly destroyed her, and now funnels her pain into her art. Despite longing for Maisie, Katie honors an agreement with the husband she left behind—to change her name and never return.

But when she and Maisie accidentally reunite, Katie can’t ignore the familiarity of her child’s compulsive behavior. Worse, Maisie worries obsessively about bad things happening to her pregnant stepmom. Katie has the power to help, but can she reconnect with the family she abandoned?

To protect Maisie, Katie must face the fears that drove her from home, accept the possibility of love, and risk exposing her heart-wrenching secret.

From the Author, Barbara Claypole White:

I write hopeful family drama with a healthy dose of mental illness. My aim is to create characters who challenge stereotypes of invisible disabilities and navigate everyday life with extraordinary courage. All of them are inspired by my poet-musician son, who has battled OCD for nearly twenty years. OCD is a chronic, much misunderstood, illness. It terrorizes you with unwanted thoughts, relentless what-ifs, and crippling irrational fear. Like diabetes, OCD demands constant management. The difference is that no one cracks jokes about insulin shots.

Popular culture is quick to focus on either the quirkiness of OCD or compulsive behaviors such as hand washing. For many, however, the struggle is purely mental and easily hidden. This is often the case with postpartum OCD, which tends to manifest as intrusive, obsessive, horrific images of harming your baby. The heroine of my fifth novel, THE PROMISE BETWEEN US, is trapped in a private hell with such thoughts. Unable to escape the misbelief that she’s Norman Bates in dirty yoga pants, Katelyn abandons her baby to protect her, to keep her safe.

Many new parents and grandparents suffer with postpartum OCD in silence, too ashamed to seek help. I wish we could obliterate that shame; I wish we could celebrate the strength it takes to live with mental illness and the scars it leaves. In Japan cracked objects are mended with gold—to enhance the notion that damage brings history and beauty. Or, as Leonard Cohen suggested, cracks let in the light. Amen—to finding light and gold.