MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS

The creators of the hugely bestselling Sisters offer a survey and celebration of the complex bonds between mothers and daughters. Saline's terse descriptions of 37 mother/daughter pairs, drawing heavily on the women's own (sometimes very frank) words, are accompanied by Wohlmuth's sensitive, tightly cropped black-and- white photographs of the families in question. The relationships described here range widely, from the deeply loving and supportive to more troubled and uncertain connections: A mother and daughter from Bosnia reflect on the love that has helped preserve them; adopted daughters, and women raised by stepmothers, discuss the profound impact their mothers have had on their disrupted lives; a woman with a double mastectomy talks about the ways in which her small daughters have given her back her self-respect; a woman in her 60s describes what life is like caring for her bedridden mother. There are some famous figures here (Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee Curtis, Cindy Crawford, Margaret Atwood, Ruth Bader Ginsburg), but the most powerful and affecting stories are those told by less prominent figures—activists, reporters, businesswomen, farmers, and housewives. (First printing of 350,000; author tour)