Sarah Hoover with Special Guest Alexandra Auder

Main Point Books welcomes Sarah Hoover with her powerful new book exploring the costs of motherhood.

Main Point Books welcomes Sarah Hoover and guest host Alexandra Auder. Sarah's new book, "The Motherload: Episodes from the Brink of Motherhood," is an unflinching look at the shame, secrecy, and desperation of failing at motherhood, and one woman's journey to reclaim her sense of self after childbirth.

This event will be in our lower level event space. This is a ticketed event - each ticket includes a copy of the book.

About the Book

Like most of us, Sarah Hoover grew up imagining a certain life for herself, and when she moved from Indiana to New York City to study art history, the life she’d imagined began falling into place. She got her degree in art history, landed a job in a gallery, made friends, and met interesting artists, one of whom became her husband. But when Hoover got pregnant, everything in her life began to unravel.

She felt like an imposter in her own body. She grew distant from her friends and husband. Anxiety, fear, guilt, and shame threatened to swallow her. She also experienced trauma at the hands of one of her doctors—a stark trigger. And when her son was born, there was no joy.

Her despair was persistent, even with help, therapy, and pills. Grieving a lost identity and angry at the world around her, she found herself despising her baby, her husband, and herself. She was afraid it might not end. With the help of a doctor’s diagnosis, Hoover began to understand the cluster of symptoms that informed her experience—she was drowning in postpartum depression—and that she wasn’t a bad mother or a failed woman.