Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss

The death of a mother--particularly during one's young years--is traumatic. Writing of her own experiences of losing her mother when she was 17, and the grief of hundreds of women she interviewed who lost their mothers through death, abandonment or another form of separation, freelance writer Edelman marshals a wealth of anecdotal evidence, supplemented with psychological research about bereavement, that indicates that one's longing for a mother never disappears. Though the focus is on early loss for girls and the implications for their developing identity, adult daughters also speak in these pages to provide another poignant perspective. The author succeeds in opening up cathartic dialogues, personalizing a life-changing event and offering guidelines to help women of any age live with their loss. Author tour. (May)