The Second Mother

Widowed at nineteen and determined to secure a future for her young daughter, Margaret Peppers enters training as an Episcopal deaconess, placing her child in the care of her husband's family while she prepares for service in a world on the brink of upheaval.

Margaret's path leads far beyond California to mission houses in the Philippines; rural parishes in the Pacific Northwest; Japanese immigrant communities, and even the stark confines of wartime incarceration camps. In orphanages, parish halls, and barracks converted into classrooms, Margaret is a constant in the lives of children whose own families have been fractured by poverty, migration, and war.

Yet the life Margaret builds in service to other people's children unfolds alongside a quieter, more complicated bond with her own daughter. As the years pass, motherhood takes another shape, and devotion-to God, country, and family-reveals its hidden cost.

Inspired by the real life of Margaret Peppers, The Second Mother is a work of historical fiction that traces one woman's search for purpose across continents and crises.