Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Be careful what you wish for is an age-old

trope in storytelling, right? You rub on a monkey's paw hoping to, I don't know, be super rich,

and then you get it, but everyone hates you and you end up alone and sad at the end,

that sort of thing. Yursa Daily Ward has a new novel out.

It's called The Catch, and it is very much playing with this idea of wish fulfillment.

The book is dedicated to readers who have lost a parent, and it's about a character who

desperately wants her mom back, so much so that she'll let herself believe anything.

Daily Ward talks to M.P.RPR's Aisha Rosco about what it

felt like to lose her own mom and the questions she'd have if she could meet her again. After the break.

She isn't a ghost. She's a con woman. That's a key line from a new novel with a mind-bending premise.

Twin sisters, Clara and Dempsey grew up apart,

raised in separate London families after their mother's mysterious death years ago. Then on their

30th birthday, Clara swears she sees their mom on a city bus. Here's the thing, or the catch. The mom is the same age as her girls are, 30 years old.

The catch is a novel by Leursa Daily Ward. She's a poet and an award-winning writer. Welcome to the

program. Hi, thank you for having me. Could you read from that moment when Clara thinks she sees her mom?

Yes, sure. She is my mother and she is on the bus. My mother rides the bus, the number six bus.

Let me help you understand because I need to be understood. Though I might never have known my

mother, I know my mother when I see my mother. She died in 1995, they told us, or she was missing,

presumed dead in 95, and then they found her remains, or what they said were likely her bodily remains,

what they said likely were her remains, but can't have been her remains, all washed up on the banks

of the River Thames, swollen as two people, slick with green moss. There was no foul play, none at all, they said.

So why is Clara so sure that this woman, who seems to be the same age as her, is her mom?

...