A mama cow’s devotion to her calf provides lessons in motherhood to a poor Southern woman in this novel of family, survival, and human-animal bonds.
South Carolina, 1950s. Homemaker Sarah Creamer has been left to care for young Emerson Bridge, the product of an affair between Sarah’s husband and her best friend. But beyond the deep wound of their betrayal, Sarah is daunted by the prophecy of her mother’s words, seared in her memory since childhood: “You ain’t got you one good mama bone in you, girl.”
When Sarah finds Emerson a steer to compete at an upcoming cattle show, the young calf cries in distress on her farm. Miles away, his mother breaks out of a barbed-wire fence to find him. When Sarah finds the young steer contently nursing a large cow, her education in motherhood begins.
But Luther Dobbins is desperate to regain his championship cattle dynasty, and he will stop at nothing to win. Emboldened by her budding mama bone, Sarah is committed to victory even after she learns the winning steer’s ultimate fate. Will she too stop at nothing, even if it means betraying her teacher? One Good Mama Bone explores the strengths and limitations of parental love and the ethical dilemmas of raising animals for food.
Bren McClain was born and raised in Anderson, South Carolina, on a beef cattle and grain farm. She has a degree in English from Furman University; is an experienced media relations, radio, and television news professional; and currently works as a communications confidence coach. She is a two-time winner of the South Carolina Fiction Project and the recipient of the 2005 Fiction Fellowship by the South Carolina Arts Commission. McClain won the 2016 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Novel-in-Progress for "Took" and was a finalist in the 2012 Pirate's Alley Faulkner Award for Novel-in-Progress for One Good Mama Bone. This is McClain's first novel. Visit her website at http://www.brenmcclain.com.
What People are Saying About This
Ben Fountain
Bren McClain writes of elemental things with grace, wisdom, and power. One Good Mama Bone speaks with a quiet authority that comes through on every page.
Mary Alice Monroe
One Good Mama Bone is everything that Bren [McClain] is—smart, confident, unflinchingly honest, witty, wise, and possessing a reassuring wisdom and kindness that carries the reader from the story's heartbreaking beginnings to a morally and emotionally satisfying conclusion. McClain's debut novel is a tour de force!... This is a novel that just might break your heart, and it might well heal it too, but with both acts Bren McClain will remind you of why each of us is entrusted with a heart in the first place.
Robert Olen Butler
Bren McClain's brilliant and ravishingly moving novel speaks eloquently for all of us who find our deepest humanity intimately connected with all the sentient creatures around us. Humane and universal, One Good Mama Bone is an instant classic.
From the Publisher
2019 Patricia Winn Prize for Southern Literature
Gene Baur
Emotional bonds between humans and animals have long been written about, but never has the bond between a woman and a mother cow been placed front and center. It's about time. The world is ready for this true portrait of a mother cow's compassion and the lessons she has to teach us all. This is an important story whose time has come.
