When She Was Ours: A Novel

Thea Erickson, a renowned surgeon, is filled with both joy and grief as her family gathers at their home on a summer night in 1995. Her elder daughter Phoebe is getting married, but even the happiness of the day feels bittersweet, as Thea grapples with a terminal cancer diagnosis. She worries she won’t be around to support her younger daughter Astra, who’s still in college, but even Thea cannot foresee what is to come—a terrible accident the night of the wedding that changes Astra’s life forever.

In a last-ditch effort to protect her family, Thea arranges a secret meeting with an old family friend and extracts a promise that will reverberate long after she’s gone.

Years after her mother’s death, Astra has moved forward with a career and relationship, but she still struggles with her grief. When a man reaches out to her and Phoebe, offering a window into their mother’s past, Astra must make a choice, and her decision forces her to face what it means to love someone after they’re gone, who we decide to forgive, and how families reckon with the past.

Anna Nordberg is a journalist and culture writer whose essays have appeared in Slate magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She grew up in New York City and now lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children. When She Was Ours is her first novel.

“When She Was Ours is an affecting debut about the fault lines that run through families and the resilience that emerges when they’re exposed. Nordberg writes with clarity and compassion about the secrets that shape a family as she traces a mother’s final choices and the long shadow they cast on her daughters. The result is an insightful and gripping story about grief, forgiveness, and the stubborn love that binds us, even when it hurts.” —Jacqueline Friedland, USA Today bestselling author of He Gets That from Me and Counting Backwards

“Beautifully told, this deeply moving story about mothers and daughters, grief and memory will resonate with anyone who has ever looked at their mother and thought, but how will I go on without you?” —Nicola Kraus, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Best We Could Hope For and The Nanny Diaries

“When She Was Ours is a spellbinding portrait of love in its fiercest and most fragile forms: between partners, between sisters, and above all, between mothers and daughters. I read with my heart in my throat, swept away by Nordberg’s deeply human characters and their quest for wholeness in the wake of loss and rupture. An unforgettable tale by a brilliant magician of a storyteller.” —Nicole Graev Lipson, USA Today bestselling author of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters

“This isn’t a book that demands your attention with dramatic twists; it earns it through emotional honesty.” —Manhattan Book Review

“I didn’t expect to feel so invested so quickly, but within the first few chapters, I was completely pulled into Astra’s world.” —Los Angeles Book Review

For fans of Tom Lake and Anna After, this luminous debut is a deeply moving family drama about mothers and daughters. With exquisite prose and emotional precision, When She Was Ours is an uplifting exploration of family bonds, healing, and how understanding our past helps us intentionally choose our future. This exquisite novel stayed with me long after I turned the final page.

—Pippa White, Editor