Nothing can give a mother more pride and break her heart more than a teenager. Having survived three, and working on the fourth, I can attest to that statement with solid knowledge of its truth.
And when those teenagers come to the conclusion that they know more than mom or dad, and set out to do something reckless, I don’t think they ever truly know just how much we parents worry and grieve.
George Bishop’s debut novel, “Letter to My Daughter,” gives the account of one mother’s anguish as she waits for her fifteen-year old daughter to return home after a horrific family argument.
It was a stupid fight, over a heatedly debated spring break trip, but words were said, a cheek was slapped, and Laura’s daughter Elizabeth sneaks out of the house and takes off in her mother’s car. And when she doesn’t return home, all Laura can do is sit and wait and worry. To keep her mind off of all the ugly possibilities the world holds for a teenage girl, Laura begins to write a letter to her daughter, at first hoping to explain how difficult parenting can be. But the letter turns into more than an explanation or apology, it becomes a trip back in time as Laura tells the story of her own teenaged years, growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana during the 1970s.
Laura tells of her first love with a Cajun boy that was forbidden by her strait-laced parents, and how that love caused the young couple to do foolish things. She remembers her banishment from her hometown to the strict Catholic boarding school, where out-of-control young ladies were sent, and where she encounters prejudices and conformity that stifle her young heart and mind.
Laura writes of how that special boy back home joined the army to make a new life for them, and ends up in the midst of the Vietnam war, never to come back home. And she shares the secret of a baffling lifetime symbol of her lost love and the meaning behind it, and how it caused her schoolmates to rally behind her.
Laura writes of how that special boy back home joined the army to make a new life for them, and ends up in the midst of the Vietnam war, never to come back home. And she shares the secret of a baffling lifetime symbol of her lost love and the meaning behind it, and how it caused her schoolmates to rally behind her.
I’m not quite sure how George Bishop managed to do it, but in “Letters to My Daughter,” he captures the very heart and soul of a mother, with all the weariness, heartache and love it is composed of. This novel will touch the hearts of mothers, daughters and families everywhere.
