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The Moms Have It
Fantastic books dedicated to some notable mothers.
BY ELIN WOODS
For this issue’ s theme, coming out around Mother’ s Day, we decided to focus on some of the most important people in our lives: moms. I’ m not a mother, but I have one, am friends with many mothers, and I’ m also an aunt to four amazing kids. Motherhood can come in a variety of shapes, and it isn’ t always straightforward. These literary selections celebrate moms in all their forms through a couple of different genres and are all great reads. One of them might even make a great gift idea for the mom in your life.
Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation
By Cokie Roberts Last fall, I discovered a PBS cooking series called A Taste of History, which focuses on American history through food, especially during the Colonial and Revolutionary eras. Something that struck me about the show was that the host spent a lot of time focusing on our founding mothers, not just the fathers. So I knew I had to include this book in my roundup, because while many of the women featured in it were actual mothers, they also played an important role in the foundation of the United States. Like Martha Washington, they were mothers to the entire country, someone the citizens could turn to for comfort and a sense of knowing that, eventually, things would be OK. Author Cokie Roberts, a journalist you may know from shows like Morning Edition and World News Tonight, clearly spent a lot of time researching the women featured in the book, even exploring their recipes( bonus!) and sharing how the women of the 1700s influenced not only the 13 colonies, but our world today as well.
10 | NW GEORGIA LIVING MAY / JUNE 2025
Well-Behaved Indian Women
By Saumya Dave My mother used to warn me not to laugh too much at her antics because we all become our mothers one day. I can’ t tell you how many times I’ ve noticed and called myself out on doing things I would have snickered at had my mother done them when I was young. That’ s the premise of this whole novel: the moments that we don’ t understand about our mothers and grandmothers until we face similar circumstances or take a step back to see our elders as people. The book is told through the eyes of three generations of women as each one struggles with their own life and their relationships with one another. Mimi, the grandmother, admits to not always being the greatest mother, but she vows to become the best and most supportive grandmother to Simran. In the middle is Nandini, who didn’ t plan on being an unsupportive and demanding mother, but here she is, with demands and unsupportive people in her own life. Will these three women find common ground and repair their relationships before time runs out?
There’ s No Such Thing as Bad Weather: A Scandinavian Mom’ s Secrets for Raising Healthy, Resilient, and Confident Kids( from Friluftsliv to Hygge)
By Linda Åkeson McGurk Pick a country and there’ s probably a book themed around a national concept surrounding raising children and parenting advice. In this one, author Linda Åkeson McGurk, inspired by the differences in culture she encountered after a move to Indiana from her native Sweden, touches on the Scandinavian philosophy that there’ s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes, and promotes getting kids outside more like they do in her homeland, no matter the conditions. It’ s all what you make of it, she says. It’ s a larger metaphor for life for parents raising children— or any of us, really. Life may throw us curveballs, but there can be beauty in the breakdown, and that should be where our focus lies. As someone who’ s been a teacher, another concept discussed in the book that I really enjoyed is that childhood isn’ t a race to become an adult. There should be time set aside for play, which is something we should do as adults, too. Play is an important part of living, and there’ s a lot of learning done while playing.