Pearl

Pearl is the story of a young woman in a small English village who has never come to terms with her mother's disappearance, which feels like a lifetime ago.

Marianne is eight when her mother goes missing. She is left with her baby brother and her grieving father in a ramshackle house on the edge of the village, and she holds on to fragments of her mother's love: the smell of fresh herbs, the games they played, the songs and stories of her childhood. As time passes she struggles to adjust. She is fixated on the disappearance and certain that her father is keeping secrets from her.

In one of her mother's dusty old books, Marianne finds a medieval poem called Pearl. Trusting in the consolation it promises, she begins to feel that her own life is following the course of the poem. Still, questions remain. She is increasingly haunted by an unmarked gravestone in an abandoned chapel and by the tidal pull of the river. As her childhood home begins to crumble, the past leads her toward self-destruction.

Can Marianne ever understand her mother's choices, and will becoming a mother herself help her find peace?