Die Wildmohnfrau

When Mia's mother opens the newspaper one morning, she comes across a personal ad that will turn her little family's life upside down. Without hesitation, she decides to leave the father of her child and set off into the unknown with her five-year-old daughter. What sounds like promise and adventure for the life-hungry mother means one thing above all for the child: the painful loss of her roots. Again and again, Mia has to adapt to completely new environments and leave behind familiar and beloved things; but besides many fears and deep loneliness, the girl also experiences moments of fleeting happiness again and again.

The author Sarah Knausenberger has prefaced each chapter of her novel with a short excursus on botany. In this way, she interweaves general scientific knowledge about the growth of plants with the individual story of a young girl who has to grow up far too quickly under adverse external conditions. And yet she manages to wrest a little bit of reliability from life and finally find her inner home.

Coordinated with the botanical reflections, the book contains 14 small ink drawings by the illustrator Elke Ehninger embedded in collages, as well as further full-page collages reflecting the moods of the book and its multi-layered subject matter.