Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett

Peter, a forty-year-old asylum lawyer in New York, lives an isolated life until the case of a young gay Albanian asylum seeker forces him back to the night of violence in his youth that estranged him from his mother, Ann. Ann, an Episcopal priest, left Peter's father for a woman, Clare, and together they founded Viriditas, a women's retreat; years later their relationship falters when Ann develops feelings for another woman at the retreat. Moving between Peter's adolescence and first love, his work for his clients, and Ann's life at the retreat, the novel builds to a confrontation between mother and son over the secret that divided them.