cover image Mother's Letters: Essays

Mother's Letters: Essays

Elizabeth Hampsten. University of Arizona Press, $26.95 (185pp) ISBN 978-0-8165-1370-3

These essays show an unusual depth of understanding about families and what their members mean to one another. In the title essay, Hampsten ( Settlers' Children: Growing Up on the Great Plains ) tells of reading through the letters written from 1928 to 1950 by her mother, a woman who had romantic visions about life, even though much of hers was spent raising children (who she sometimes referred to as ``livestock'') and seeing to a failing ranch. The excerpts from the letters are sweet and often amusing with hindsight, but this volume's strength is in the picture Hampsten paints of her own family. She claims not to remember the years her children were born, then goes on to catalogue their personalities in tremendous detail, showing that she recalls much more important matters. An essay about visiting her husband when he was teaching in China and realizing that their relationship had changed irrevocably is remarkable in its intimacy and lack of malice, and a work about a daughter who strayed from the path her parents envisioned for her is heartbreakingly bare of excuses, either for the essayist or her daughter. This volume distills the essence of motherhood into concentrated and highly palatable chunks. (Apr.)