What Kind of Mother, the debut memoir by Judy Sandler, follows a mother confronting her son’s descent into severe mental illness as what first appears to be substance use disorder evolves into a dual diagnosis of bipolar disorder. As he rejects medication and cycles through alternative treatment programs that ultimately fail him, Sandler reckons with denial, guilt, and the painful realization that she cannot save her son—only he can save himself.
What Kind of Mother will be published on September 8, 2026, by West Virginia University Press.
Sandler’s work has appeared in The New York Times’ Tiny Love Stories, Yale University Journal of Medicine’s The Perch, The Atticus Review, Pangyrus, Grown and Flown, The University of Chicago’s The Awakenings Review, among other publications.
Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of What Kind of Mother, which was designed by Kelley Galbreath, along with a Q&A with Sandler about its creation.
While writing the book, did you have any ideas for what you wanted the cover to look like?
I never thought about a cover while writing the book. When I am in the writing/editing/creating/revising mode, I am caught up in telling the story through words. I am trying to use the craft of writing to share my story. I consider myself a writer and not much of a visual artist or designer; my head goes to words first and not images. The first time I thought about an image for the cover was when I completed an author questionnaire for my publisher, West Virginia University Press. They asked to me send them examples of book covers I loved, and book covers I did not like. Then, we started to focus on what images I had in mind for the cover. I wanted the image and the title to work together to answer the rhetorical question: What Kind of Mother? All kinds of mothers. I wanted the image to be a universal picture of a person, but then fragmented in some way. As in, this perfect image of the mother does not exist.
Can you explain what the design process was like once you started working with your publishing team?
Once I had communicated my ideas, Than, the director of WVU Prees, sent me 8 cover samples. I was able to narrow my choice down very quickly, as this particular cover—the colors, the fragmented image, the gender neutral person, (I feel like it could be me or my son), kind of popped out to me. I knew that was the cover for my book. There were some details I wanted tweaked and I was given the opportunity to give that feedback to Than.
What was it like seeing your finalized cover for the first time?
I felt relieved, and excited to start sharing the book cover. It felt like some kind of closure, like the words were all wrapped up and ready to be delivered.
How does the cover work to convey what the book is all about?
The book is about my reckoning with my son’s decent into substance use disorder and severe mental illness and his refusal to seek medication. As much as this book is a quest for the root of my son’s mental illness, it’s also an unflinchingly honest, voice-driven interrogation of the anti-pharmaceutical netherworld—a memoir that reckons with my past in order to live with forgiveness in the future. The cover puts the focus on me, the mother, which is where it belongs, because this is my story, not my son’s story. The images of the pills reflect substance use, but the main focus is on the fragmented photo of the person asking the question, “What Kind of Mother?” The answer: all kinds of mothers, everywhere.