Susan Rieger, LIKE MOTHER, LIKE MOTHER
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[0:42]Susan Reager is the author of, like, Mother, like Mother, a novel.
[0:47]I met Susan at a breakfast that Dial Press had for three of their authors, and I was blown away by the description of this book.
[0:54]I felt like I discovered it, which, of course, I didn't.
[0:57]And then was pleasantly surprised after I picked it for one of my top 22 books in the year 2024, that others joined me, like, say Barnes and Noble, who picked it as their book club pick, and Jordy's book club, and many, many others because the book is fabulous.
[1:14]Susan Reager is a graduate of Columbia Law School. She has worked as a residential college dean at Yale, and as an associate provost at Columbia.
[1:22]She has taught law to undergraduates at both schools and written frequently about the law for newspapers and magazines.
[1:28]She is the author of the heirs and the divorce papers.
[1:31]She lives in New York City with her husband.
[1:33]Welcome, Susan. Thank you so much for coming.
[1:35]On Momstone, I have time to read books to discuss, like, Mother, like Mother, which I loved just getting that out there now.
[1:42]Congratulations.
[1:43]Thank you so much.
[1:45]I was so delighted to hear your story when we met at the Dial Press Breakfast, and I was so taken with your description of the book then.
[1:52]I couldn't wait to read the book, and then once I started, oh my gosh, I couldn't stop.
[1:56]So give everybody else the pitch that you gave at Dial Press, and why you wrote the book, and what it's about, and all of that, please.
[2:04]The book is about, I always say the beating heart of the book is a woman named Lila Pereira, who's an editor of a big Washington paper.
[2:12]And a woman who admits she is completely ill-suited to be a mother.
[2:18]Her own mother disappeared when she was two.
[2:20]Her father was abusive, and she solved the problem of having children by marrying a wonderful man who's a wonderful father.
[2:29]And as she is the beating heart of the book, the pulse of the book is her daughter Grace, the youngest of her three daughters,
[2:36]longs for a conventional mother, and wants someone to pay her attention.
[2:41]And so one of the things Grace does when she's almost 30 is to write a book about her mother, which does nothing to assuage her own her, but hurts other people.
[2:51]And so what we do is we're waiting to see how Grace grows up as you have to it, and how you have to deal with your parents.
[3:00]One of the things I always say about parents and children is that you have to bury your parents twice.
[3:06]The first time when you put them in the ground and the second time when you say that's who they were, they're never going to change.
[3:14]I'm that's very hard.
[3:15]I'm 78 and I'm not sure I buried my parents completely for the second time.
[3:20]My mother is always in my brain some ways, you know, either helpful or not.
[3:27]So that's the story of the book and there's other people too.
[3:31]There's French.
[3:32]I think it's very, there's a lot about work.
[3:35]And I think work is very important to most women.
[3:38]And there's a lot about friendship and the importance of friendship.
[3:41]And I think it's one of, I like that friendship a lot between Grace and her best friend.
[3:46]Yes.
[3:47]Oh, and grannies.
[3:48]Since I've become a granny myself, I'm very particular towards grannies.
[3:52]And there are, there's one really I think remarkable granny to my princess who may be my favorite character.
[4:02]I love them all even when they're difficult.
[4:05]I love them.
[4:06]I won't accept one except one.
[4:09]And where, like, where did the germ of this idea come from?
[4:13]What was the spark?
[4:14]I always say that there would be no Lila Pereira without my own mother,
[4:18]her own much of a needy.
[4:19]My mother is, I mean, much is, is not, was not so career bound.
[4:24]She came up a different generation.
[4:26]She was born in 1913.
[4:28]And she was much more active in our lives.
[4:31]But my father's Jewish and my mother's Italian.
[4:34]And they, they both don't conform very much to this stereotype,
[4:38]some Jewish and Italian parents.
[4:40]My father was the warmer one as in this book.
[4:43]And my mother, my mother supported it.
[4:45]My mother always had our back.
[4:47]She wasn't warm and cuddly.
[4:50]And as I grew up, I came to realize that I think of her more as a person than as a mother.
[4:56]And she was a terrific person.
[4:58]All my friends adored her.
[4:59]And she was like nobody else's mother.
[5:01]And she was like Lila.
[5:02]She had an exotic name, an exotic background.
[5:05]She was beautiful.
[5:06]My sisters and I are not nearly as beautiful as she was.
[5:09]I mean, we're okay.
[5:11]I'm not, I'm like, we've forgotten.
[5:13]We've got through.
[5:14]I got married twice.
[5:15]But my mom is, I think.
[5:19]But Lila, Lila is my mom to the nth degree if she's my mom at all.
[5:26]What she's smart and funny like my mother.
[5:29]I suppose that's the seed and secrets too.
[5:32]There were always family secrets in my, I mean, for instance,
[5:35]my grandparents were never married.
[5:37]My mother's parents.
[5:38]They were, they were anarchists.
[5:40]So I found out when I moved in with my first husband before I was married.
[5:45]And my grandmother told me, and she were talking.
[5:48]And we should have you moving in.
[5:50]Peter, very nice.
[5:51]She said, I want to buy you a housewarming present.
[5:53]And then, and then she said, you know, your grandfather and I were never married.
[5:57]And I said, no, no, I didn't know my mother had never told us that.
[6:02]And you know, like all children, I kept my mother's secret.
[6:06]You know, we didn't talk about it.
[6:07]I will once raised it with her when we were talking about family secrets.
[6:11]She also had a sister she had never told us about.
[6:14]I said, you know, your parents were never married.
[6:18]And she said, oh, yes, that was it.
[6:21]End of conversation. We never talked about it.
[6:24]She didn't look back.
[6:26]She didn't look inward and she didn't look back, which is a big part of this book too.
[6:32]Who looks inward and who looks back?
[6:34]Wow.
[6:35]And yet you have done so much looking inward that you've created like 10 different characters who are all looking.
[6:42]You're looking into all of them.
[6:44]You're like.
[6:45]And of course when everybody says, who are your characters?
[6:48]I always say, they're me.
[6:49]They're all me.
[6:50]I don't know where else would they come from.
[6:52]But I spent 10 years at analysis.
[6:54]From the time I was 35 until I was 45.
[6:57]And I've sort of exhausted the inward looking.
[7:00]I use it.
[7:02]I use it.
[7:03]But at the moment, I'm just just looking forward more than looking back.
[7:07]So that this book is clearly an indication that that's not true.
[7:11]Was analysis really helpful?
[7:13]I always wonder about that.
[7:14]I know there's a rigor to it.
[7:16]It was hugely helpful.
[7:18]I had a wonderful analyst.
[7:20]Went through all the stages.
[7:21]I mean, she was.
[7:22]She talked to you.
[7:23]She helped you.
[7:24]And she would sort of drop pieces of advice.
[7:28]And yes.
[7:29]And I think it made me a better mother.
[7:31]And that was part of it.
[7:33]Yes.
[7:34]I think it was hugely helpful.
[7:35]You know, I was, you know, I'm still neurotic.
[7:38]But you know, unless you're neurotic,
[7:40]you can't be analyzed unless you're neurotic.
[7:42]You can't be pathological or associated with plastic.
[7:46]So.
[7:47]I mean, if I wasn't neurotic, who would I even be?
[7:50]What would I be?
[7:51]Even by background.
[7:52]What were my chances?
[7:53]No.
[7:54]For a while.
[7:57]I was writing like a neurotic New Yorker's guide to Disney World.
[8:00]A neurotic New Yorker's guide to whatever.
[8:03]And has a huge audience.
[8:06]Yeah.
[8:07]I mean, you know, it is what it is.
[8:09]Just admitting that mobs don't have time to read.
[8:12]I mean,
[8:13]sure it is out there.
[8:15]Yes.
[8:16]Always putting it out there.
[8:17]Well, I have to say your book had like not only an effect
[8:20]on me when I was reading it, but is one of those books where it
[8:23]changed my behavior in real life.
[8:25]Because the part where Lila's marriage,
[8:29]and I don't want to give anything away, but she gets more
[8:31]and more consumed with work and spending time at the office.
[8:35]And you unravel this.
[8:37]And that's not the right word.
[8:38]But you sort of show us how it eeks into her personal life
[8:43]gradually and not all at once, but just a misdinner here,
[8:48]another misdinner, until it got to the point of some
[8:51]unsustainability for her husband.
[8:53]And one day he's like, okay, you know,
[8:55]so I'm reading this.
[8:58]And in the morning, my husband says to me,
[9:00]as I'm about to like go to work,
[9:02]he's like, hey, do you have any interest in going down the block
[9:04]and getting a coffee, which of course I had no time to do.
[9:07]And I was like, why would I do that?
[9:08]And then I was thinking, yeah, okay, I'm going to go get the coffee.
[9:11]I'm going to get the coffee.
[9:13]So we went to coffee and it was lovely.
[9:15]And the whole time I was thinking about you and your book
[9:17]and how if you don't make the time and you let work
[9:20]consume you gradually, then you lose the things that are perhaps
[9:25]the most important or the underpinnings of everything.
[9:27]So anyway, thank you for that.
[9:29]No, and I think in my own marriage too,
[9:31]my husband's also a writer and is very absorbed in his own writings.
[9:35]And I finally said to him, we're going to go to a movie once a week.
[9:38]We're going to go to lunch at Lupa and go to the Angelica
[9:41]and see a good movie.
[9:43]And he said, all right, all right, now I'm not sure.
[9:46]We did it for three weeks once at the moment.
[9:48]But I'm trying, I'm trying to make sure that we spend time together too.
[9:54]Though I do a lot also with my friends by myself.
[9:57]He doesn't like this theater.
[9:59]I don't.
[10:00]like music. We go our different ways. And I'm a music that I really should say. I don't hear music
[10:06]the way people do. I like music with words. I like sun time. I like things like that, you know,
[10:13]but I love the theater. And I think the theater, my book has a great deal of dialogue.
[10:19]And I think that comes from my love of the theater.
[10:21]Interesting. I love the theater.
[10:23]Actually, you reveal character through what they say and and less about how what their
[10:29]inner thoughts are. Interesting. I know. And I saw that as I was reading the book, the news of
[10:34]the adaptation came out. So that's hugely exciting. How do you how do you feel about that? What
[10:39]can you reveal? That was um, you know, you just want hope that, you know, you know, people will
[10:45]read, will feed your people and like your book. That was really sort of stunning. And I never expected
[10:51]it. And then what the other problem is is that it takes very long for these things to get finalized
[10:56]and you know, the television world and that. And so by the time you're allowed to talk about it,
[11:04]it's been going on for months. And you sort of said, oh, that.
[11:09]But yeah, it is, it is, it's really lovely. And I wrote to, I have wonderful producers,
[11:17]Sue Nagel and Ali Frugon. And I wrote, and I said, what about Scarlett Johansson for
[11:22]July? I'm putting it out there. Yeah, putting it in the universe, right? We all hear it. We all
[11:29]heard it here. So yeah, so it would be fun. It would be fun. And I said, I have to let go. It's
[11:38]this their project. And I'm going, have you seen that did your children read the book or did you
[11:42]read to them the wild road? But oh my gosh, I was actually just reading it. It's right over there.
[11:47]My son is obsessed. And the movie we were about going to go see the movie. And he said, you have
[11:51]to read the book first. And I was like, okay, so I started reading the book. But they're very,
[11:56]my daughter who loved it. And now the children's bookstore in New York when she lived there,
[12:01]they loved it. I read it to them any number of times. I loved it too. I haven't seen the movie yet.
[12:05]She said, the movie is different from the book, but they're both wonderful. And so I just feel
[12:12]they're making it. They know what they're doing. What works as a television. I don't know what
[12:16]works as television. So I think I'm pretty much, you know, I'm interested. I want to say, I'd love
[12:22]to be on a set. I think it would be fun. It's up to me. Girl, you're handsome. But it's theirs, you know.
[12:28]What children's bookstore did your daughter own? She owned one in Brooklyn called Stories.
[12:33]It's all flatbush. And it closed during COVID because you can't have a children's bookstore without
[12:40]having children come in. And that was hard. And that was one of the reasons I think they wound
[12:46]up moving to Rhinebeck. First of all, you know, the book in this very expensive private schools
[12:53]are crazy. And the kids now go to Rhinebeck schools, which are fabulous. And she grew up a lot
[13:01]of her life in Amherst, Massachusetts. So she likes small towns. I don't like small towns. I like large
[13:07]cities. I like New York City. So yeah. But I think it's exactly right for her. And of course,
[13:13]I miss having them so close. But I think it's been great for them. I mean, it's a drive,
[13:18]at least they're not across the country. Tell me a little more. I mean, I read your bio and
[13:24]all, you know, all the other stuff, add a little color to how you got here. Like, as you just said,
[13:30]you're 78 years old, this book is such a triumph. It's so amazing. I'm like totally obsessed
[13:36]with it. But what has what came first and what were the biggest zigzins' eggs of your career?
[13:41]Oh, all right. I'm a lawyer by training. But I've never really practiced. And I certainly
[13:47]don't give advice, because it would be completely untrustworthy.
[13:52]When I, my first job out of our law school was teaching up with the law school, teaching legal
[13:57]writing. And I had a baby. And I didn't want to work in a firm. And one of the things we had to do
[14:04]was make up a moot court brief so that the students could argue it. And you had to make up the
[14:08]facts. And you had the line cases. And I had so much fun doing it. I said, someday, an epistolary
[14:16]novel about law would be fun to write. And about seven or eight years after I got divorced,
[14:24]then I was at Yale, where I was a dean of one of the residential colleges. I started writing
[14:30]about a divorce as an epistolary novel. And that became the divorce papers, which was my first novel.
[14:37]And I had done a lot of journalism, you know, op-ed type pieces. And I never thought I would be a
[14:44]fiction writer. And then I discovered it. There's a tremendous pleasure in making things up,
[14:52]in shaping a world to the world you wanted. So I wrote that. And then they said,
[14:58]write another one. So I wrote another one. We started as an epistolary novel. But didn't
[15:04]but didn't become an epistolary novel. Because as part of the epistolary novel, I wrote a short story.
[15:09]And my editor said, no, no, I like that short story. Make that the novel. So I did that.
[15:14]And then this one, I don't know where this one came from. I was working on a different book.
[15:19]And that wasn't yelling at all. And so I just, and my agent said to me,
[15:24]I didn't know their book. It's hard over. And so I did.
[15:29]Well, it wasn't the one I was contracted to write. But they were happy. They were happy with it.
[15:36]Well, I mean, I can't imagine disappointment.
[15:40]So that's a very accidental career. You know, I've taught undergraduate law. My best job was
[15:46]as a residential college dean, dean of investor styles at Yale. I'd love that. I did it for 11 years.
[15:52]Well, but I had to get back to New York.
[15:55]I was in Davenport, by the way.
[15:59]But you were there, I think after my time.
[16:01]What? Yes, I graduated in 98.
[16:06]I left, oh, I was there from, I left in 2002. I came there in 92 to 2002.
[16:12]Oh, yeah, we were there at the same time.
[16:16]Yeah, I didn't have that many friends and answers in styles.
[16:19]Obviously, watch by it a billion times.
[16:22]Yeah, no, it was a wonderful job. And I loved, I loved Yale students.
[16:26]I thought they were really a great group. And it, but it was before phones, before iPhones.
[16:32]Yes, when the phone, there was one kid who had an iPhone in our dining room and it went off once.
[16:37]And everybody stood up and, you know, like the game pig and pointed to him.
[16:42]And, you know, no, it makes a whole difference if you have phones in the dining room.
[16:46]I got email, my, this is really dating me.
[16:50]Email came like second semester freshman year or something like that,
[16:54]with the Minerva accounts. Do you remember that?
[16:57]I don't remember one. I had a, yeah, I don't remember what kind of account I had that gave
[17:00]to me when I showed up. Anyway, yeah, these were different times.
[17:06]Although I do remember spending quite a lot of time trying to find friends at various parties
[17:11]on the weekends and never knowing and like how much easier would it be to just look?
[17:15]As long as I know, I'm not going to go all over the place.
[17:18]And also what would we do without Professor Google and Professor Wikipedia?
[17:23]Yes, exactly.
[17:26]Who are some of the authors that you must admire?
[17:28]Well, my favorite books when I was little, I loved, I loved Nancy Drew. And I think a lot of women
[17:36]with careers and, and who write, love Nancy Drew. She was, I love the original ones too. They,
[17:43]they rewrote them. And then the original one, she's 16 years old. She has a blue register.
[17:49]She has a friend named George who wears trousers and a friend named best who has really
[17:55]losses. And she solves mysteries. And her mother's dead, she's an half orphan,
[18:00]and she has her father to herself. I mean, it's just perfect for, you know, 10-year-old girl to
[18:05]read a book like that. I think having, I like could have a life of my own. And I, I love
[18:11]Nancy Drew. I think that was very important. And then the next book that was very important to me
[18:15]was Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre was in a rage. And I had never read a book about a girl in a rage.
[18:20]And I felt, oh, that's very comforting. And then I moved on to, you know, I mean, I love Pride
[18:28]and Prejudice. And I love Prejudice of a Lady. But recently I read the books I've read recently
[18:32]that I really loved was North Woods by Daniel Mason. I thought that was wonderful.
[18:39]It sort of reminded me of the grandmothers who might always love reading to when I was young.
[18:43]And then I also read the postcard. Have you read the postcard?
[18:47]I literally, it's next on my list. And I'm interviewing Anne Burst. We just scheduled it today
[18:51]about her new novel that's coming in. Well, I thought, I thought, I just held me in a way. Not
[18:57]sure I believed it. Right? It just held me in a way. And I just had to read it. And both those
[19:05]books I read very quickly. I have other books sitting on the side that I put aside. It's very
[19:10]hard when you have a book coming out to think of anything else at the most. Yes, I understand.
[19:16]And you know, you have your blank. But I did read Anne Apolitano's and I did read
[19:25]Allegra Goodman's because they were sort of colleagues and they're both wonderful writers.
[19:30]And that was good. But so I just won't know about me. I think he's a hero of our time.
[19:36]And I just didn't hire him. So I think I'm going to read that next. I think I have to go off
[19:42]fiction for a bit. You depicted the abusive relationship in the book with, well, many abusive
[19:51]relationship. The abusive figure of the father and the effect of it on not only the mother and
[19:57]but all the kids. And
[20:00]all of it. It was quite vivid and really impactful emotionally.
[20:05]I mean, it's hard to read. I almost can't believe it, but of course it happens all the time,
[20:11]which is perfect. But tell me a little bit more about that because, you know, when you talk
[20:16]about it, seeming like a play or very vivid, or this is a, that was a particularly some
[20:21]of those scenes of abuse were very vivid to me.
[20:25]I had to figure out how Lila became who she was. And I decided that she was motherless
[20:32]and had a terrible, terrible father. And it impacted her sister and brother differently.
[20:39]And I mean, it's hard to talk about it. I don't want to give away some of the story. I don't,
[20:44]I mean, I have had no abuse in my family. I mean, we were a family of yellers, but nobody,
[20:51]no, we were never even hitches children, my parents, and they just, we were sent to our room.
[20:58]And then we, we were asked if we wanted to come out and were we ready to apologize. And mostly,
[21:03]I went back into my room for another, another. I always liked, I liked that. I was like,
[21:09]I love my room. There's no place I'd rather be. Yeah, but so I wanted it to be vivid because I needed,
[21:17]I wanted, I wanted Lila to know, you know, the epigraph is don't look back something maybe gaining
[21:24]on you. This is who Lila is. She's not looking back. And so she, I needed a background she
[21:32]didn't want to ever look back on. So that's why I made it so vivid. And Grace's friendship,
[21:41]tell me more about that. And did you have, do you have a, a close friend from your past who
[21:47]is particularly formative for you for you growing up? You know, I, you know, my oldest friend
[21:54]and who's still one of my closest friends, we met when we were, when we were 20 to 23, we were both
[22:00]married to assistant professors and promising young men. And she is one of the smartest people I know
[22:08]and one of the sameest. And she's always been someone who taught me down. It's very good.
[22:14]I'm more excited about who she is. And she's always been there to talk to me down and to support
[22:22]me. And we are still incredibly close friends. I didn't know what I mean. She is, and I love her
[22:27]husband too. So that is really one of the gifts. And, and because I do have very strong women
[22:33]friendships, I wanted that to be a part of the book. They are so important to you. I don't know
[22:40]how you go on without them. I mean, I love my husband and he's a lot of fun. But I, I talked to him
[22:47]to be in fact, I always think I'd like being, I think it's easy to be living with a man because
[22:53]they don't really understand you. So it's very restful sometimes. Right?
[23:01]He's not going to get it. He's not going to get it. So, you know, just go and read a book in
[23:07]a little. Whereas your friends are capable of understanding you. And sometimes you don't want to be
[23:15]understood more than you are, so anyway. I love that. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[23:22]Read. Read everything. And, and read fiction, but don't only read fiction. I am a
[23:29]Jane Austisk and completeness. I'm a Dickens completeness. I mean, I've read all, I think the great 19
[23:35]century novels can't be beat. I love, I love um, factory. Now, there's a book that's been very
[23:41]influential to me. Vanity Fair, back, back they sharp is really one very naughty girl. And he
[23:49]doesn't punish her. Oftentimes bad girls get punished. And he doesn't. So I've always loved that book.
[23:56]I, I, there's a theme here that I like bad girls. I mean, not awful, but bad. And read men
[24:02]as well as women. I mean, I, I, um, I've read a lot of women and all of a sudden and love them.
[24:08]I mean, and I think middle marches up there at the top, but I love Philip Roth. Not everything,
[24:13]but I can't get through service theater, but I saw a play of it, which was wonderful.
[24:18]But I love that he's so wild. And let's, I think that's just great. And I love them. What's his name?
[24:27]Oh, Joseph on the old book Netherlands. And he just has another one, a good one, which I want to
[24:33]read. And my daughter's a novelist. I don't know what one book. Yeah, her name is Maggie
[24:38]Francia. She wrote a book called Perfect Reader. And she's a wonderful writer. And now she's
[24:44]doing children's books. So the whole family's writer. My, my ex has been read a novel, which he
[24:50]published when he was 67 called rules for old men waiting, which is a great novel. And I published
[24:56]my first novel at 67. And our daughter beat us. But her novel, but I think she's the only girl in
[25:04]the world who had two parents published novels at 67. So that's the other thing is you have,
[25:11]you can do certain things. I don't think I could have written a book when Maggie was a little girl
[25:16]and my, my steps and who I raised was, was, was, was young. They just take up. I don't know how you
[25:22]did too much room in your head. I could go to work and do a, a speech job. But to sit down and spin
[25:30]your imagination, I just couldn't have done it. And then I, then I had to, I've always worked,
[25:35]and I've always had to have jobs. And I always need a job where I have life insurance and a 401k plan.
[25:42]So that's, that's hard to. And I mean, when I went to Yale, I had to teach the first couple of years,
[25:47]I had to teach two courses, one course each semester plus Dean. And when they cut us down to
[25:52]one course a year, then I began writing. Oh, and did, I'll tell you what else helped me. There's a
[25:58]great course at Yale called daily themes, where you have to write a theme a week for 13 weeks.
[26:07]And I took it twice because my upstairs neighbor was teaching it. And he read my themes. And it's
[26:13]like the writing aerobics, because you got the prompt on a Monday and you had a hand it in
[26:20]biotubes. They had overnight to do it. And then they had the rest of the time that TA is to read it.
[26:27]And I writing a theme that someone else gives you a prompt was hugely helpful. And to get you going,
[26:35]the other thing is that you want to write the best way to write is to
[26:39]my agent like a audition chair. You have to be sitting in your chair to write.
[26:46]You can't be thinking about it. So address the computer. That's what I said. But reading and reading
[26:55]reading is probably the best training. And because I'm so late in life, I never went to, I never
[27:00]took an MFA, which my daughter did. And the benefit of an MFA is you have good readers reading your
[27:08]stuff. And she had a whole group of fabulous friends from she went to Columbia. So that was very good.
[27:17]Try it.
[27:20]Susan, thank you so much. This has been a pleasure. Your book was wonderful. I was so hooked. I
[27:28]loved it. I just, I can't stop thinking about the characters. And I finished it. I don't know,
[27:34]a couple of weeks ago or whatever. So anyway, it was great. Congratulations.
[27:38]Oh, thank you so much. Okay. For all the good you do for writers and books, thank you very much.
[27:44]Oh, thank you very much. I'm going to plug your own book. Green Jewish. Yes. Now,
[27:50]I'm being Jewish now. Yes. Thank you. That's, I really think, I thought that was a very
[27:56]important book to get out wherever you stand on any of these issues. And it's all very complicated.
[28:02]And but I thought that wasn't was a very good thing to have done. Thank you. I appreciate it.
[28:08]And I like your dog. I do too. Very sweet, very well-behaved. Yes. All right. Well, thanks so much.
[28:18]Have a great day. Thanks for the time. Bye bye.
[28:23]Thanks for listening to moms. Don't have time to read books. If you love it, please leave
[28:27]a review and follow us on social at city Owens and at city readers.