The Nine is Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg ’87’s second novel from She Writes Press, a publishing house for women writers.

Her first, Eden (2017), was called “an engrossing, character-driven family saga” by Kirkus. The Nine explores the complex relationship between a helicopter mom and her 14-year-old son, who's invited to join a secret society, the Nine, at his elite New Hampshire boarding school.

An excerpt (reprinted by permission of the publisher):

The Nine would be something of his own. Something his parents—specifically his mother—would know nothing about. Attending boarding school had shone an uncomfortable light on how she'd carved herself into him, almost burying a weight he had to carry. Ever since she’d dropped him off, he’d been consumed by a perverse push and pull in their relationship, wanting her to feel his absence as poignantly as he felt hers.

THE NINE 
By Jeanne McWilliams Blasberg ’87
She Writes Press, August 2019

This story originally appeared as part of the Smithies Create column in the Fall 2019 issue of the Smith Alumnae Quarterly.

Photo by Hunter Levitan