Mothers Daughters Liars is a story of transgenerational trauma. Or at least that's what Mariangeles believes. There is a mantra in her family that declares
"Las penas y las olas nunca llegan solas"
which translates as "Sorrows and waves never arrive alone
"
and Mariangeles repeats this until she believes it to the point of insanity. In chapter one she asks
"What if the sorrows of our mothers are the future disasters of our daughters?"
So is this true? Will her daughter Tia suffer the same misfortunes as Marieangeles and the women that came before her? or will Tia be strong enough to break the family spell?
Marieangeles and Tia's story is set at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twenty first, when superstition that the passing of the century would send the world to its doom was rife, and gossip and lies had the power to bring a good woman down. In this oppressive atmosphere, an epidemic of cholera changes Tia's life forever. Her father descends into alcoholism and her mother is on the brink of madness. Desperate to escape their domestic strife, Tia leaves her parental home in the west and travels east to a town near Gibraltar. But she is naïve and unprepared for the wickedness that surrounds her. When a savage fire devastates the community, she finds herself at the centre of spiteful lies and malicious gossip. An ex-priest, a pistol-loving industrialist and a weak, but wealthy charlatan all seek Tia's downfall, and the only way to prevent her from ruin is if Mariangeles regains her senses and comes to save her.