More Than All Right: A Daughter's "Momoir"

Long before “Steel Magnolias” became a hit movie, Holly Ridge, North Carolina had produced its own vigorous southern flower, Lena Shepard Morris Bird. In this memoir of her mother, author Patricia A. Bird narrates how Lena inherited all the best of her traditional world while developing the gifts that allowed her to unconsciously model a newer one.

Through nineteen vignettes, Lena’s story shows how she applied her motto, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right,” in her home as mother o...