From
the Shelf
Mother's Day is a ways off, but honoring mothers is timeless. With Will Schwalbe's recent The End of Your Life Book Club, he invited us to share the two years he had with his remarkable mother as she was dying of cancer. This brings to mind other writers whose memories of their moms became lovely, insightful books.
Ivan Doig's 10th
Montana-set novel, The Bartender's
Tale, was published this year. Twenty years ago, he
wrote Heart Earth,
a memoir of his mother, Berneta, who died on his sixth birthday. Not until
1986, when Doig inherited the letters his uncle received from Berneta during
World War II did the author have more than "half-rememberings" of his
mother. Heart Earth
is not just a tender tribute to Berneta, but an insightful companion to his
memoir of his Montana roots, This
House of Sky; both
are poetic sagas of the challenges of wartime and nature in Montana's high
country.
The subtitle A Black Man's Tribute to His White
Mother tells only a fraction of the remarkable story James McBride
shares in his 2006 memoir, The
Color of Water. Ruth McBride Jordan, born Ruchel Zylska, survived
Polish pogroms, an abusive Orthodox rabbi father and anti-Semitism in her
Virginia town to outlive two husbands and raise 12 children. Both husbands were
black, and she taught her children, "God is the color of water." Her
standards were high; the last section of McBride's book lists Ruth's children
and their academic degrees; all completed at least four years of college.
J.R. Moehringer, the
only son of a single mother, grew up among the patrons of his uncle's
Manhasset, Long Island, tavern. The 2012 publication of his novel Sutton
has re-introduced Moehringer's 2006 memoir The Tender Bar, an homage
to Manhassat he wrote in response to the town's heavy losses on 9/11; at the
same time, it serves as a loving tribute to his mother, Jean, who realized her
son's need for male nurturing.
Cheryl Krocker
McKeon, bookseller, Book Passage, San Francisco via Shelf Awareness
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