Family Matters: Books That Celebrate the Power of Love and Connection

As well as Mother’s Day being in May in North America, May is also National Family Month. A coincidence? Somehow I doubt it.

Mother’s Day is a great time to buy mom — or yourself — some new books!

So I was trying to decide which books to use to promote family and motherhood. Of course, a lot of the characters in both my YA series and my adult crimes series tend to be foster kids, throwaways, street kids, and others who have not had a strong positive mother influence in their lives.

But my Parks Pat Mysteries series does have a strong mother-daughter pairing in Detective Margie Patenaude and her teen daughter Christine. Margie is a single mom, with little mentioned about her past or how she became one. It is clear that she has been parenting alone for a long time.

There is good communication and respect between Margie and Christina, for the most part. Of course, Margie does sometimes disappoint Christine by not always being home when she said she would be or demanding answers to questions about Christina’s boyfriend. And Christina is growing up too fast, sometimes has a teenager attitude, and doesn’t like her privacy to be invaded by her mother. In other words, a normal, healthy, mother-daughter relationship.