It Hit Me Like a Ton of Bricks: A Memoir of a Mother and Daughter

Life is a series of losses. I've decided to be very Zen about it. I have lost two husbands, my parents, my brother, countless friends; it is just one loss after another. You might as well get used to it." So muses the author's mother in this poignant and humorous memoir about mothers and daughters.

Loss is a way of life for both Catherine and her mother. But where it made the daughter ravenous for contact, it made the mother lose her appetite for people. While the two always had a fierce at...