Wife and Mother

Ruth Doan MacDougall is perhaps best known these days for her "Snowy" books (all recently re-printed and expanded), which follow the lives of a group of friends from high school through middle age and now into their sixties. Her The Cheerleader has become a kind of contemporary classic of growing up in the fifties. I first read Wife and Mother back in the 70s while serving in the army in Germany, and loved it so much, I mailed it back to my folks to read. It's a well-told story of how love can begin on rather shaky ground and gradually evolve into something rich and lasting. This was true, I think, of many marriages that began back in the 60s. Real love takes some work - that's MacDougall's message. By turns bawdy and moving, this is a show more book that will make you look at love and marriage - and love as friendship - in a new way. I just re-read the book after more than thirty years. It's even better than I remembered it, possibly because I now have a different, more mature perspective, but mostly, I think, just because it's just one helluva good story that holds up. If you can find this book, read it! It deserves a re-print, and maybe a sequel too. How about it, Ruth? What's the rest of Carolyn and John Ash's story? - Tim Bazzett, author of ReedCityBoy and Pinhead: A Love Story show less