Emilia Millares (b.1981) is an author and a copywriter. Writing has always been part of her life, from the short poems kept in her dresser drawer to the daily work in copywriting.

Her debut Fruits of My Labor revolves around 33-year-old Alma who meets Caesar. Alma desperately longs for a baby — Caesar does not want kids. Emilia Millares skilfully depicts the joy of becoming pregnant as well as the grief of returning from the maternity ward without a baby, but with a body already adjusted to motherhood.

Millares resides in Stockholm with her husband and their four children.

Agent: Erik Larsson

Published Polaris, August 2021
Genre Fiction
Pages 268

A seed can take root and begin to grow at any time if only the conditions are right: the temperature, the humidity, the air, and the soil. Like a seed, a baby can only be conceived a few days a month. It must be timed exactly — the egg letting go of the ovary, the reluctant man letting go of control.

Alma longs for children, she sees babies and pregnant bellies everywhere. When she meets Caesar, there is an immediate attraction. It is a physical sensation: a yearning to put her hand on his arm, her cheek to his neck to inhale his scent.

But Caesar does not want children. He wants to eat out, sleep late, and come home when he feels like it. They are incompatible. Alma should break up with him, but something makes her stay.

They continue seeing each other, going out for drinks, going on road trips, and spending long nights together. But as time passes, Alma comes to regard every used-up birth control packet as a manifesto of wasted days and spoiled eggs.

When she, despite Caesar's resistance, becomes pregnant, things do not turn out the way she had planned. She does not get an ultrasound image to post on Instagram – instead she learns that her baby has only half a heart.

Reviews

“Like a stranglehold on all internal organs.”
- Svenska Dagbladet

“With a distinct eye for nuances, Emilia Millares provides this realistic and psychological contemporary novel with existential depth.”
- BTJ