maternal deprivation

Discusses the effect upon a daughter of her mother's death and how it changes her identity, personality, family, and life choices.

In early-1970s Detroit, African-American teenager Rae Dodson struggles to care for her ill father, who suffers debilitating migraines, after the departure of her mother and tries to make sense of her parents' dysfunctional relationship and her own future.

Iris Greenfeder feels a major part of her life is unfinished, so she writes a fairy tale about her mother, and in the process discovers a non-threatening way to deal with her mother's death years earlier.

Angela returns home from school only to find that her mother has left, and as she grows into adulthood, she continues to struggle to understand her mother's motivation for leaving.

Sixteen-year-old Nomi struggles not to give in to despair when her mother and sister flee their home in East Village, a Mennonite community in Manitoba, leaving her in the care of her increasingly depressed father.

Fourteen-year-old Lily and her companion, Rosaleen, an African-American woman who has cared from Lily since her mother's death ten years earlier, flee their home after Rosaleen is victimized by racist police officers, and find a safe haven in Tiburon, South Carolina, at the home of three beekeeping sisters, May, June, and August.

Fourteen-year-old Lily and her companion, Rosaleen, an African-American woman who has cared from Lily since her mother's death ten years earlier, flee their home after Rosaleen is victimized by racist police officers, and find a safe haven in Tiburon, South Carolina, at the home of three beekeeping sisters, May, June, and August.

Fifteen-year-old Alice's typical teenage life is shattered when her mother commits suicide, and in the ensuing years, Alice struggles to accept her mother's death and her own feelings.

After her mother is committed to a psychiatric hospital Alice Fivey is shuttled from relative to relative, trying to develop her own sense of self in the midst of the ever-changing world around her.