The Sometimes Daughter
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4.0 • 7 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
In this poignant and beautifully written novel, Sherri Wood Emmons, acclaimed author of Prayers and Lies, explores the complex bond between a daughter and her errant mother. . .
Judy Webster is born in a mud-splattered tent at Woodstock, just as Crosby, Stills, and Nash take the stage. Her mother, Cassie, is a beautiful, flawed flower-child who brings her little girl to anti-war protests and parties rather than enroll her in pre-school. But as Cassie's husband, Kirk, gradually abandons '60s ideals in favor of a steady home and a law degree, their once idyllic marriage crumbles.
Dragging Judy back from the Kentucky commune where Cassie has taken her, Kirk files for divorce and is awarded custody. When Cassie eventually moves to an ashram in India, Judy is grief-stricken. At school, she constructs lies to explain her unconventional home-life, trying desperately to fit in to the world her mother rejected.
Cassie calls and writes, occasionally entering Judy's life just long enough to disrupt it. But little by little, Judy is growing up. As she grapples with her father's remarriage and her own reckless urges, she encounters all the joy and heartbreak that goes with first love, first loss, sex, drugs, and self-discovery. And when Cassie comes home again, Judy, who has tried so long to find a place in her mother's life, must finally decide what place Cassie claims in hers. . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sweet Judy Blue Eyes is born in a Woodstock tent to free-spirited, "blissfully stoned" hippies Kirk and Cassie in Emmons's second novel (after Prayers and Lies). Cassie has a hard time adjusting to the constraints of motherhood and family, refusing to give up free love and drugs, and alternates between ignoring and lavishing controlling love on her confused daughter. She wants to take Judy to live on a commune, but Kirk wrestles sole custody, leading Cassie to run away. She dodges a bullet by narrowly missing out on a trip to Jonestown, and continues her spiraling search for self. Attempts at connecting with her daughter only show how unstable and selfish, if well-intentioned, she is. Meanwhile, as a teenager, Judy is forging her own awkward way in the world (boyfriend, drugs, unwanted pregnancy) and struggles to find a measure of forgiveness for her mother. Emmons has a keen grasp of the difficulties of mother-daughter dynamics, and the specific struggles of young parents who are still figuring themselves out. She also paints the shifting turmoil of mid-'60s to early-'80s America with complexity, creating a vivid, expansive background for an intimate story.
