As an aging advice columnist shows symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, her daughter takes over the column while attempting to rebuild her own life and deal with her own daughter.

Includes reading group guide.

Fifty-year-old artist's model Helen Knightly, worn down by years of dealing with her depressed and needy mother, gives in to the temptation to smother the now old and senile Clair and spends the next twenty-four hours feeling both liberated by what she has done, and tormented by her memories of the past and expectations for the future.

Reserved and snobbish Candida Wilton, newly divorced and estranged from her daughters, moves from her beautiful home in Suffolk to a small flat in a run-down London neighborhood where she sets out to rediscover her life.

" For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Refusing to believe that she would be abandoned as a young child, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of Alice's old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries...

Rose, married for three years, decides she has made a mistake and leaves her husband, traveling from California to Kentucky to take up residence in a home for unwed mothers where she plans to have her baby and give it up for adoption, but she soon discovers life still holds some surprises.

"Nothing brings an estranged family together like a murder next door. High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud of: her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she's built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage - and hoping...

"[S]hows how a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all--the one between mother and daughter. Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn't spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy's childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed...

A mother and child plant a rainbow of flowers in the family garden.

Deeply wounded by her embittered mother's lack of sympathy for her aspirations, Elnora finds comfort in the nearby Limberlost Swamp, whose beauty and rich abundance provide her with the means to better her life.