‘My stepmother was the woman to whom I was truly a daughter’

1. Shortly after her mother has left the family there is a new woman living in the Verschuur residence: Aunt Ank. When Rita is eight years old her father marries Ank and she becomes her ‘second mother’. Ank is a willful Protestant woman who sternly and lovingly runs the non-religious family. Being a passionate art historian she surrounds herself with reproductions from the Italian Renaissance. One of those, a pink angel, is Rita’s. Although she doesn’t share her stepmother’s passion she treasures this picture.

Through the years her stepmother’s domination increases and Rita wonders why her father always takes his wife’s side. She moves to Sweden for her study but when she returns home with husband and children it takes a remarkable confession to avoid a separation with her parents.

After the death of her second mother Rita realizes that this woman, suffocating as she may have been, was a true mother to her. She travels to Florence where her mother would have loved to show her around. What will she find there?

The Second Mother is a meticulous, ruthless and humorous  portrait of an ambiguous relationship that spans almost her entire life. This book is a colorful counterpart of the highly successful My Mother’s Secret in which Rita Verschuur tried to solve the mystery of her biological mother.

'After My Mother's Secret again a fascinating novel about the mother figures in Rita Verschuur's life.' - Noordhollands Dagblad