Valerie and her wife Kristen are in Hawaii as a way for Valerie to begin to recover from the death of her brother, Charlie, in a fiery car wreck. Kristen visited years before she met Valerie and made friends with Isaac. Now the couple are Isaac’s houseguests.
One of the really important themes that comes out of Without Saying Goodbye is that being a good mother is something we learn. It’s not innate in that we can just rely on instinct to make it all happen for us. There’s a widely quoted African proverb: ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ In the developed world, we have sometimes lost that sense of the importance of aunties, grandmothers, and older women feeding into our collective knowledge of how to raise our children.
In the last couple of years, Mother’s Day brings dolls to my mind. It’s not like I was a little girl with lots of dolls. In fact, I remember only a couple of occasions where dolls were part of my life. But as the years passed, and I transitioned from daughter to mother and now to grandmother, dolls have sweetly slipped into my life. Perhaps it’s the fictionalizing of my past as situations sometimes get fuzzy, and I suppose this is when the mind mixes and matches reality with invention. But for whatever reason, lately dolls have become one of my preoccupations.
Shot in the Dark is the latest Coffeehouse Mystery by Cleo Coyle. This is one of my favorite series and I am always excited when there is a new one out.
Kathi Daley’s work is always packed full of several engaging character-driven storylines, but it is her easy-to-read style and entertaining dialogue that makes it right for a page-turner weekend.
Ellie Avery’s schedule is always busy. Her husband is deployed on a mission, due back in a couple of weeks. Her kids are at an age that there are tons of extra activities. She’s got to be organized. In fact, she’s made a part time job of it.
When George pulled his beat-up Toyota into his mother’s driveway, there was a shiny new car already parked there he didn’t recognize. Then he saw the “T” logo and realized it must be a Tesla. His twin sister, Georgia, had to be here already. Teslas weren’t big in this town. She must have rented it when she flew in from the East Coast. Could you even rent a Tesla in Nowheresville?
I was panting my way through a contraction when my cell phone sang out, “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” The contraction ended, but the cell played on.
This week we have a recipe from A Catered Mother's Day by Isis Crawford. At the end of this post are details on how to win copy of this book!
For A Catered Mother’s Day author Isis Crawford decided to ask the men she knew for recipes they would make their wives on Mother’s Day. All the recipes are simple to execute, and tasty to eat.
by Madeline McEwen-Asker
My mom radiated anticipation, like a carthorse promoted to the racetrack, but we were at the mall. She was the only die-hard monarchist I'd ever known in my nine short years, but this apple fell from the tree and bounced into the American republic.
