When I was a teenager, I rode alone on a Greyhound bus all the way to Memphis. I was meeting a pen pal with whom I’d corresponded for over 2 years. I still can’t believe my mom let me do that. Anyway, while I was on that long bus ride, a guy sat beside me and promptly fell asleep on my shoulder. He leaned on me and snored; I was too young and naive to figure out how to get him off. And so this is how we rode along for hours, until I finally landed in Memphis. You know, that sounds like something that would be strange to relate to. That’s because it IS strange! It’s something cool that author Emily Wierenga and I have in common.

In Atlas Girl Emily really bares her soul from the inside out.  She describes her life as a very young child in Africa.  Amazingly, Wierenga seems to remember events that took place when she was as young as 18 months old. She shares her struggles as an anorexic adolescent.  In these pages, she also explains how heartbreaking it was to watch her mother die.  This was a tough book to read.  There are scratches on my soul from the sympathy that just poured out of me as I read Emily’s experiences.  Her words are so penetrating; it’s impossible not to react to the vivid detail that she presents.  Some of the chapters are more difficult to follow than others.  Wierenga tended to overlap run-on sentences so that they became an entire paragraph, except with one period.  This is a sisterhood book.  All women are daughters, we all have mothers, we can’t ignore that part of our life.  Emily associates her mother’s love with her own tense moments as a daughter.  It’s a bumpy road to ride, but it’s ours and we have to stick together.  In turn, reading this book will make me a better mother as well as a better daughter.  It’s all a matter of perspective.

Another book that was heavy on the emotion was All for a Sister.  My initial reaction to this book was bor-ing.  I didn’t think it would hold my interest because it seemed to be all about a prima donna who insisted on becoming a movie star.  Just not my interest, really.  But then there’s a big murder mystery and things really get heated.  Although I thought I knew how the story would turn out, this book really held me attention to the end.  Just as mothers played a big role in Atlas Girl, the backbone of All For A Sister was the mother figure “Margi.”  It was so tough to decide whether I liked her or despised her.  I especially wanted to find out how her daughter would react to the journals that Margi left behind.  There’s a big play between the Haves and the Have Nots in All For A Sister.   This book will make you ponder the equality within the justice system.  The story ricocheted from one timeline to another, which made it somewhat difficult to keep up, but it all pays off in the end.