Book excerpt: 'All those things no one ever tells you about motherhood. It's like secret mothers' business. Lots of my friends had babies before me, but not one of them ever told me it would be this hard...It's like a code of silence.' The Mothers' Group tells the story of six very different women who agree to regularly meet soon after the births of their babies. Set during the first crucial year of their babies' lives, The Mothers' Group tracks the women's individual journeys-and the group's collective one-as they navigate birth and motherhood as well as the shifting ground of their relationships with their partners. Each woman strives in her own way to become the mother she wants to be, and finds herself becoming increasingly reliant on the friendship and support of the members of the mothers' group. Until one day an unthinkably shocking event changes everything, testing their bonds and revealing closely held secrets that threaten to shatter their lives. The Mothers' Group is an unflinching and compelling portrait of the modern family in all its complexity and intensity: love, sex and marriage and all the joys and tensions of raising children in an increasingly complicated world. Moving, provocative, tender and utterly gripping, The Mothers' Group will draw you in and never let you go.