115 pp. "Before They Were Our Mothers was conceived when editor Patricia A. Nugent realized, at her mother's funeral, that she knew very little about her mother's life before her mother was her mother. She'd never asked; her mother had never offered. Nugent deeply regretted missing the opportunity to know her mother better. But that window had closed. To help others avoid similar remorse, she compiled this anthology of real-life stories about women before they were mothers. In addition to deeply evocative first-person accounts, Before They Were Our Mothers offers readers a personal history of world events from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, as written in the present moment by current-day descendants: Joyce Hunt Bouyea; Carol R. Daggs; Ginny Riedman-Dangler; Constance A. Dodge; Cathy Fedoruk; Nadia Ghent; Zoe Ann; Christensen Gonza; Crystal S. Hamelink; Rachael Z. Ikins; Donna Jackel; Catherine Ruggiero Lanci; Christy O'Callaghan; Josephine Pasciullo; Barbara J. Spaeth; and Sue Sweet Van Hook. Universal themes weave delicate threads through these disparate women's lives. Well-meaning parents making questionable decisions; arranged marriages; the desire for education and a career; unplanned pregnancies; the centrality of faith and religion; the need for family and affirmation; medical advances; the brutality of war; and the crippling effects of poverty, prejudice, and discrimination. Themes not so different from circumstances in our lives today. You won't forget the women in these stories; you won't want to. And they may inspire you to tell your children your stories - before you were their parent."
