Debut novelist Lauren Haddad weaves the flow of societal status, relationship and nature together in “Fireweed,” exploring themes of intersectionality, motherhood and accountability.

Populist and patrician, hustler and moralist, salesman and satirist, he embodied the tensions within his America, and ours.

If you have a complicated relationship with your mother—or with motherhood generally—these stories of maternal ambivalence, ...