In this forthright personal memoir, author and poet Janet Mason reflects on the factory-worker lives of her mother and grandmother in working class Philadelphia while she copes with her mother's final illness. Her mother's feminist example and unwavering support of a lesbian daughter become increasingly poignant as Janet explores the choices not open to her mother that she made for herself.

Equally pressing is the sheer labor of dealing with medical misdiagnosis and subsequent treatment of her mother, and the toll it takes on her own relationship as she spends increasing hours in conversation with the woman who gave her life.

Tea Leaves is about daughters, mothers and women, their choices, and the never-ending circles of their entwined lives.