The novel opens with a prologue recounting a chance meeting after a space of many years between the narrator, a writer, and John Braille,[4] a successful painter famed for his technically accomplished but showy portraits of rich patrons.

"The Mother" is a superbly sensitive and nuanced portrayal of a woman in a grey dress leaning on a grand piano and looking at her khaki-clad son as he stands before her ready to answer the call of war.

Born into extreme poverty in Canning Town, a slum area of London, Olga's early years as an orphan were spent trying to escape punishment at the hands of her much older drunken and sometimes violent siblings, and in attempting to avoid the notice of her terrifying and controlling Uncle Grubhofer, a wire spring dealer who owns their lodgings.

Eventually, realising that she will never be able to afford to educate the boys on her own she agrees to marry the middle-aged Sir Philip Ballater, a cultured museum director on whom she has already been forced to rely financially.

[7] The Bookman (New York) noted that the plot of what might easily have been a sensational story, "is rescued and dignified by a genuine and unforced characterisation, in the light of which the action is seen to proceed simply and inevitably.

"[8] Taking a rather lukewarm view, The Liverpool Daily Post considered the novel not sufficiently distinctive in subject or style to enthuse over, while conceding the story to be carefully told and interesting.

"[10] Another reviewer in The Sphere argued on the basis of this novel and his other writings that Aumonier's real strength was not so much in the development of a good central plot, but rather his faculty for creating interesting characters and his gift of penetrating characterisation.