Amber discovers boxes containing a lifetime of her mother’s journals and letters…
She realizes she's been given a rare chance to unlock the enigma that had been her mother — but will her mother’s writings reveal the woman she remembers, or someone else altogether?
Not the Mother I Remember tells the story of a sensitive girl raised by an exceptional and unconventional woman during a time of social change, gradually exposing the true nature of their relationship and their extraordinary bonds.
The memoir skillfully weaves three points of view into one compelling story:
1. The author’s life being raised by her mother, Jackie
2. Jackie’s worldview as seen through her journals and letters
3. The author as an adult, looking back and reflecting on their disparate ways of understanding life.
About Jackie
Jackie was a bold, renegade woman of her time — a human potential movement pioneer, teacher, and author who believed in pursuing adventure, free love, and personal expression and didn’t care what anyone thought of her. This was before “feminism” became a household word, and during a time when women were still expected to stay home and take care of the kids.
Because of her many accomplishments, including earning a PhD at age 50, traveling the world on her own, and learning to fly a small plane, many people admired her. But she had a dark, conflicted side, sometimes suffered from depression, and was so focused on her own desires that she didn’t consider the emotional needs of her six children or the impact her actions had on them.
As Jackie aged, she became a victim of Alzheimer’s disease. Amber became her caretaker, forced to watch this once vibrant, wild woman disappear into her illness.
In Not the Mother I Remember, as Amber learns about her mother’s past from the journals and letters she left behind, she compares her mother’s personal reflections with her own memories of their life together, delves deep into their mother-daughter relationship, and arrives, eventually, to an understanding of their shared humanity.
Critically Acclaimed
A finalist in the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the Sarton Women's Book Award, reviewers have called Not the Mother I Remember "fascinating and complicated,” and "honest, engaging, poignant, and beautifully, elegantly written” (scroll down for more reviews).
Order your paperback, Kindle, or audiobook copy today and delve into this this excellent, multi-layered memoir exploring a fascinating and complicated mother-daughter relationship.
Amber Lea Starfire is an author, editor, and teacher with a passion for helping others write their stories. Author of Week by Week: A Year’s Worth of Journaling Prompts and co-editor of Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the '60s & '70s, her personal essays, creative nonfiction, and poetry have also appeared in anthologies and literary journals. When she’s not writing, Amber enjoys the wine and weather in Napa, CA, living life to the fullest.
