Ursa possesses a very special gift. She can travel through memory and revisit her past. After she flees her hometown for the counterculture glory of 1950s California, the intoxicating potential of her unique ability eventually draws a group of women into her orbit and into a ramshackle Victorian mansion in the woods
outside Santa Cruz. Yet Ursaâs powers come with a cost. Soon this cultish community of sisterhood takes an ominous turn, prompting her son, Ray, and his pregnant lover, Cherry, to flee their home for Los Angeles and reinvent themselves far from Ursaâs insidious influence. But escaping their past wonât be so easy. A series of mysterious events forces Cherry to abandon their baby, leaving Ray to raise Opal alone.
Now a teenager and still heartbroken over the abandonment by the mother she never knew, Opal must journey into her own past to reveal the generations of secrets that gave rise to the shimmering source of her familyâs painful legacy.
From the forests of Santa Cruz to the 1980s glam of Melrose Avenue to a solitary mansion among the oil derricks off La Cienega Boulevard, and brimming with the double-edged capacity of memory to both heal and harm, Timeâs Mouth is a poignant and evocative excavation of the bonds that bind families together.