Wild Aster is about a woman with a talent for survival, whose life spans the early twentieth century.
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In This Spotlight On Wild Aster
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About Wild Aster
Mae Smith starts her life as a stolen good: her biological mother, Ida, kidnaps her from her adoptive parents, and Mae grows up on the run, constantly changing towns and names, never able to find a home. After her mother’s death, Mae is determined to live a different kind of life. But over the next half century, as she reinvents herself against the backdrop of the Depression and Second World War and pursues stability amid the personal upheavals of marriage and motherhood, she must reckon with the choices she’s made and life’s inexorable turns.
Wild Aster explores the price of security, the drive to be a different mother than your own, and the daily gains and losses that define who we become. Ultimately, Wild Aster challenges us to confront the choices we make for personal fulfillment and family obligation and the perseverance that even a seemingly ordinary life demands.
Wild Aster taps into an ongoing category of literary life stories about complicated 20th century women, including bestsellers like The Ninth Hour, The Boston Girl, Brooklyn. Anna Hogeland’s first novel, The Long Answer, was called “breathtaking” by The New York Times, and received raves in Kirkus, Booklist, and the UK’s Sunday Times.
Praise for Wild Aster
“Wild Aster is the story of Mae, an unforgettable woman who moves through life in a singular way. But it is also the story of all women—those in 20th century America but also in today’s world—as both challenges and opportunities arise, and lives inevitably change. Anna Hogeland’s prose and psychological insights are stunning; it is hard not to root for Mae as she finds her way home.”—Laura Spence-Ash, bestselling author of Beyond That, the Sea
“[Wild Aster] is a gentle, generous portrait of a twentieth-century life that fired my imagination. Each life in this novel, however seemingly ordinary, holds worlds of longing.”—Colum McCann, New York Times bestselling author of Twist and Let the Great World Spin
“Wild Aster is an unsparing deep dive of a novel that takes its time to tell one woman’s ordinary, extraordinary, defiant story. Anna Hogeland’s unorthodox portraits of motherhood, family, friendship, and mid-century womanhood are all fascinating and complicated in the best ways – fervent, complex, and, best of all, unexpected.”—Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is and Enormous Wing
“Exquisitely written, Wild Aster charts the legacy of motherhood and the echoes of our choices. A shining novel that captures the beauty and bravery of ordinary life.”—Serena Burdick, USA Today bestselling author of The Girls with No Names and A Promise to Arlette
“Anna Hogeland’s Wild Aster is that rare thing: a novel that marries the feel of a timeless classic with a sharp, contemporary sensibility. Mae’s journey is filled with twists and turns—at times devastating, at others affirming, often unexpected, yet always with a deep feel of truth to them. Mae herself is a singular protagonist, filled with strength, curiosity, and an unwavering commitment to herself that I found completely mesmerizing. I fell in love with her and with this beautiful, insightful book.”—Alexis Schaitkin, author of Saint X and Elsewhere
“Wild Aster spans decades of quiet tragedy and delivers one of the most satisfying endings I have read in a long time. Hogeland’s prose feels like a character in its own right, stoic and resolute, leaving space for readers to consider their own longing, loss, and repair.”—Cara Wall, author of The Dearly Beloved
“Against the backdrop of an evolving 20th-century United States unfolds the 43-year drama of Wild Aster: one woman’s life in all its grim strain, keen appetites, hard grief, and vivid pleasure. Anna Hogeland’s prose is clear water, lucid and drinkable. Her Mae Smith is a character as indelible as some fabulous ancestor, as intimately known as an admired friend.”—Rachel Lyon, author of Self-Portrait with Boy, Fruit of the Dead, and Sixes
“As women’s rights are currently challenged, it is important to look back and remember when bodily autonomy and basic financial independence were not a given. Wild Aster introduces a character who blooms where she is planted as life presents ongoing obstacles and tragedies. Readers will empathize with Mae and be inspired by her actions. Anna Hogeland’s work of historical fiction could not be more relevant. This is a treasure trove of discussion material for book clubs.”—Pamela Klinger-Horn, The Valley Bookseller (Stillwater, MN)
About Anna Hogeland, Author of Wild Aster
Anna Hogeland is the author of the novel The Long Answer, which has been translated into seven languages. She is a psychotherapist in private practice, with an MSW from Smith College School for Social Work and an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. Her writing has appeared in Lit Hub, The Southern Review, Electric Literature, The Common, and elsewhere. She lives in western Massachusetts.
You can connect with Anna Hogeland on her website, and on Instagram.
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing | Macmillan
ISBN Hardcover 9781639739158
Pub Date Dec 1, 2026
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