Mothers and Daughters
Bastard Out of Carolina
by Dorothy Allison
Bone, an illegitimate child in a family of social outcasts in the 1950s, is aware of her mother's happiness with her new husband and will not tell her mother when the stepfather begins abusing her.
What We Keep by Elizabeth Berg
In San Francisco, two sisters visit their mother who walked out on the family 30 years earlier to devote herself to art. Now she has cancer and may die. One of the sisters is willing to visit only to please the other.
The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy
Kit McMahon's mother supposedly drowns, but she has been in London with her lover, and she makes contact with Kit when Kit is a teenager by pretending that she is Kit's mother's old friend.
Half a Heart by Rosellen Brown
When her biracial daughter appears suddenly after 18 years searching for the mother who left her, former civil rights activist Miriam Vener begins a painful confrontation with her past.
The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans
After a terrible accident, Grace retreats into silence and her horse, Pilgrim, is driven mad by pain. Her mother gambles that The Whisperer can heal both Pilgrim and her daughter. The Whisperer could calm wild horses with softly whispered secrets uttered into troubled ears.
A Cure for Dreams by Kaye Gibbons
Betty Davies Randolph tells about her childhood and the people she knew on Milk Farm Road during the Depression.
Sights Unseen by Kaye Gibbons
A girl describes what it's like having a mother who is mentally ill. She is Hattie Barnes, whose mother alternates between suicidal lows and delirious highs.
Summer Island by Kristin Hannah
Nora Bridge walked out on her marriage and left her two daughters behind. Now she's a talk show host and newspaper columnist. Her daughter Ruby is a comedienne who uses her mother as fuel for her humor. The two haven't spoken in more than a decade. The tabloids unearth a scandal from Nora's past and offer Ruby a fortune to write a tell-all about her mother. But first Ruby needs to know her well enough to write the story.
The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
Jessie Sullivan is summoned home to tiny Egret Island, where she meets Brother Thomas, a monk who is about to take his final vows, and encounters the legend of a mysterious chair dedicated to a saint who had originally been a mermaid.
Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott
A close-knit family from Marin County, California, the Fergusons struggle to cope with the trials and tribulations of life, while 13-year-old Rosie, obsessed with becoming a tennis champion, embarks on a desperate cycle of cheating.
Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult
Faith, a seven-year-old girl whose family is torn apart by divorce, begins talking to God and performing miracles, and her family enters a media circus of believers, critics, medical professionals and lawyers.
One True Thing by Anna Quindlen
After caring for her mother during her final, painful battle with cancer, Ellen Gulden discovers many surprising things about her mother's life and finds herself accused of murdering her mother in a mercy killing.
Unless by Carol Shields
A mother's grief over a daughter's break with the family revises her feminist outlook and pushes her craft as a writer in a new direction.
The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan
Over the course of one fog-shrouded year, mother and daughter find what they share in their bones through heredity, history and inexpressible qualities of love.
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Encompassing two generations and a rich blend of Chinese and American history, the story of four struggling, strong women also reveals their daughters' memories and feelings.
The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
When Siddi inadvertently reveals some revealing things about her Southern childhood in a newspaper interview, her mother, Vivi, virtually disowns her. Vivi's lifelong friends, the Ya-Ya's, set in motion a plan to bring the mother and daughter back together using a scrapbook of childhood memories that they ask Vivi to put together.