Claire McGowan's new novel follows a family who struggle to cope when their daughter is born with a very rare condition. It is partly based on the author's own family's experience with her brother.

Kate has failed at life. Once she had everything - a great job in local journalism, a happy marriage to Andrew and a baby on the way - but when her second child, Kirsty, is born profoundly disabled, it all starts to fall apart. Five years on from Kirsty's birth, Kate is at the end of her tether, smarting from a disastrous affair, unable to love her children, furious with her husband, mourning the career she lost. She decides the only way to survive is to do the unthinkable - and leave her family.

Years later, when Adam and Kirsty have grown up, Andrew publishes his memoir about Kirsty learning how to sign - something they thought she would never be able to do. But Kate, who has since moved to LA and is now married to a film producer, discovers her new husband wants to make the book into a film. Kate decides she must stop this, even if it means losing the fragile new family she's found and having to confront the one she left all those years before.

Moving between the present day and the twenty years from 2002 to 2022, revealing secrets along the way and brushing against real-life events, the story follows the fractured family as their lives develop and move apart. THIS COULD BE US is a book about loss, family, and redemption.