Following the stories of three women, Kim Hooper presents different outlooks on motherhood in her new novel, “Mother Is a Verb.” In the prologue, we meet Gwen Fisher, a 35-year-old woman from Seattle, who’s sitting in the Bainbridge Island Police Department with her 3-month-old daughter, June. Gwen was present at a shooting on Bainbridge Island, so she’s now being questioned by a detective.
She explains that she wanted to visit a woman named Angeni Luna, who lives with a group of people in—what should she call it? A “compound?” A “commune?” The detective asks whether she believes it’s a cult. “Not a cult, per se,” she replies.
