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Book Review of The Sometimes Daughter

The Sometimes Daughter
nightprose avatar reviewed on + 112 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


By Sherri Wood Emmons

The Sometimes Daughter is a beautiful, deeply poignant novel. It is a story about a daughter often abandoned by her emotionally and physically absent mother.
Born at Woodstock, surrounded by free love, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes grows up feeling unloved by the person whose love she seeks the most: her mother. Her father, Kirk, matures, taking his marriage and parenting Sweet Judy seriously. Cassie, her mother, continues the carefree hippie lifestyle, neglecting all responsibility. Eventually, she leaves Kirk and Sweet Judy to follow a communal life, with tragic consequences. Judy and her father move in with his parents, forming the only stability that Judy will ever know. They are Sweet Judys salvation, never letting her down.
Throughout the years, Judy struggles with her mothers lack of responsibility. She watches her mother make serious mistake after critical mistake, including remarrying and its sad outcome. Over and over she trusts her mother, only to be let down. As she matures, Judy must deal with the same issues all young people do, but hers are colored by the feelings of maternal abandonment. While she has her father and grandparents, she feels the physical and emotional void of not having her mother, whom she so loves.
This book delves into the intricacies and dynamics of the mother-daughter bond. Sherri Wood Emmons lays bare the frailties of this connection, and also the necessity of it. A mothers love is the first love we feel, and the one most of us count on when all others fail us. The neglect of this essential ingredient of childhood leaves one feeling broken.
Sherri Wood Emmons has keen insight and is an amazing author. I cannot wait to see what she writes next.