Every Mother Is a Daughter: The Neverending Quest for Success, Inner Peace, and a Really Clean Kitchen (Recipes and Knitting Patterns Included)

Mothers and daughters go through so much–yet when was the last time a mother and daughter sat down collectively to write a book together about it all? Perri Klass and her mother, Sheila Solomon Klass, both gifted professional writers, prove to be ideal collaborators as they examine their decades of motherhood, daughterhood, and the wonderful, if sometimes fraught, ways their lives have overlapped.

Perri notes with amazement how closely her own life has mirrored her mothers: Both have full-time careers (Perri is a pediatrician; Sheila is recently retired from a long career as a college English professor but goes on teaching); both have published books, articles, and stories; each has three children; they both love to read, and to pass books back and forth. They also love to travel–in fact, they often take trips together (and live to tell the tale). But in truth, the harder they look at their lives, the more Perri and Sheila acknowledge their profound differences in circumstance and temperament.

A child of the Depression, Sheila was raised in Brooklyn by Orthodox Jewish parents who considered education an unnecessary luxury for girls. Starting with her college education, she has fought for everything shes ever accomplished. Perri, on the other hand, grew up privileged and rebellious in the New Jersey suburbs of the 1960s and 1970s. For Sheila, fanatically frugal, wasting time or money is a crime, and luxury is unthinkable while Perri enjoys the occasional small luxury, but has not been successful at enticing her mother into even the tiniest self-indulgence.

Each writing in her own unmistakable voice, Perri and Sheila take turns exploring the joys and pains, the love and resentment, the petty irritations and abiding respect, that have always bound them together. Sheila recounts the adventure of giving birth to Perri in a tiny town in Trinidad where her husband was doing anthropological fieldwork. Perri confesses that she cant tame her domestic chaos even though she knows it drives her mother crazy. Sheila rhapsodizes about the bliss of becoming a grandmother. Perri marvels at her mothers fearless navigation of the New York City subways. Together they compare thoughts on bringing up children and working, confess long-hidden sorrows, relish precious memories–and even offer family recipes and knitting patterns.

Looking deep into the lives they have lived separately and together, Perri and Sheila tell their mother-daughter story with honesty, humor, zest, and mutual admiration. A memoir in two voices, Every Mother Is a Daughter is a duet that resonates with the experiences that all mothers and daughters will recognize.

"These authors avoid the pitfalls of the often saccharine mother-daughter memoir by interspersing humorous anecdotes within a solid framework of stories of mom Sheila's dark upbringing during the 1940s and daughter Perri's current struggle to keep her own life as a mother, doctor, writer and avid knitter under control. The two exchange ideas, conflicting memories of past events and even gentle criticisms in chapters such as 'There Are No Old Babies' and 'Milking Reindeer.' Readers will appreciate the honesty between the pair as Sheila writes about growing up with abusive and distant parents and her experience as a working mother in New Jersey during the 1960s, while Perri struggles to 'have it all' in 2005, consistently feeling as though something, or someone, has been forgotten along the way. The mother-daughter duo triumph over hectic schedules and physical distance through their love of writing and travel, ending with reminiscences of their trip to India to visit the Taj Mahal. This is a treasure for any generation." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

An ideal gift for Mother's Day, this richly exuberant mother-daughter memoir offers a chronicle of the never-ending quest for success, inner peace, and a really clean kitchen. Recipes and knitting patterns included.

Perri Klass is the award-winning author of many books, including Quirky Kids, The Mystery of Breathing, and A Not Entirely Benign Procedure. She is also a practicing pediatrician and the medical director and president of the national program Reach Out and Read, dedicated to promoting literacy as part of pediatric primary care. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sheila Solomon Klass is the author of sixteen novels, including In a Cold Open Field, and a memoir. She recently retired from her position as an English professor at Manhattan Community College, CUNY. She lives in Manhattan.