Eight memoirs about the childhood loss of a mother

Jacque Gorelick is a California native who has moved too many times to count. She’s lived all over the West Coast from Santa Barbara to Alaska. Now firmly rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area, she lives beside a creek under redwood trees with her husband, two boys, and a mélange of rescues.

Before freelance writing, Gorelick spent two decades as an elementary school teacher helping students turn ideas into stories. Her debut memoir, Map of a Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Finding the Way Home, is about hearts (medical and metaphorical) and discovering—through a traumatic medical event and motherhood—the meaning of family.

At Electric Lit Gorelick tagged eight memoirs that "explore the ripple effects of early mother loss on womanhood, motherhood, identity, and belonging. A loss that shapes daughters for a lifetime." One title on the list:

Living Proof by Tiffany Graham Charkosky

Tiffany Graham Charkosky’s girlhood unfolded against the backdrop of her mother’s cancer diagnosis and declining health. Eighteen years later, as a woman finding her footing in marriage and motherhood, Charkosky’s grief and fear resurface when she discovers her mother’s illness was a result of a specific and rare genetic mutation. What follows is a familial excavation, genetic reckoning, and heartrending reminiscence of what is lost when a mother dies, leaving her young children with unanswerable questions that cannot be quieted, no matter the years that pass. Charkosky faces genetic testing and uncertainty as she unravels the mystery of her family’s legacy through her own DNA. Living Proof is a profound story of what we inherit through genetics, memory, and time.

Read about the other titles on the list at Electric Lit.

--Marshal Zeringue