molly stroud-smith

In this psychologically fueled drama, Molly Stroud-Smith tells the heart wrenching story of a mother teetering on the edge of the unthinkable as she suffers with undiagnosed postpartum psychosis. As a teenager, Doreen Rutherford is the victim of a brutal gang rape that shapes the course of her life. Shamed by her detached, religious parents, young Doreen is convinced that her rape had been a divine punishment, and commits to avoiding further wrath by living a life of submission and repentance. However, obeying a heartless husband who believes she should provide as many children as her body will allow, has left her depleted and frazzled, and becoming increasingly more physical with her five young children. Following a particularly concerning act of aggression toward her youngest daughter, Doreen seeks professional help where she begins to confront her childhood, rehash her greatest traumas, and unravel the beliefs she has come to rely on. Eventually shaking lose a secret she has worked a lifetime to keep hidden. As her condition deteriorates Doreen becomes frequently confused, and begins hearing a voice she believes to be God's. It is this voice, which brings her both solace and concern, that begins to offer a solution she has never considered. A solution that terrifies her. Overwhelmed and feeling as if authentic help will never arrive, she must fight to regain clarity in order to make a choice. Will she silence the voice that urges her to do the unimaginable, or will she follow its advice and accept the permanency of the consequences? Told in raw, visceral prose Dead Babies is a powerful, heart rending novel that looks at a mother on the brink, and forces us to examine the very humanness in those we would rather consider monsters.