Solace

In the wonderful memoir Solace, Cornelia Maude Spelman says, "Everything I have always been writing in my diaries is about Time." With compelling frankness and consistent intimacy, she explores a rich tapestry of generations of lives, considering so many facets of what makes a life difficult as well as profound-alcoholism, recovery, loss, illness and death, the raising of children, presence and absence, mixed feelings about parents and ancestors, a devotion to art, and marriage-both when it's comfortable and when it isn't. I admire deeply what I have always loved about Spelman's writing-her willingness to tell an honest story, create moods, and then gaze thoughtfully into them, weighing what one does next or figuring out how it all goes together. This book is a gem.

- Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Everything Comes Next and Voices in the Air

Solace is deeply moving, honest, and immensely readable. Cornelia Maude Spelman's candid revelations take shape in letters to her mother and in intimate, emotionally precise episodes of her struggle with alcoholism, the devastating loss of her best friend to cancer, her marriages, the crux of aging, the rewards-and the disappointments-of parenting, as well as, the particular difficulty of the writing life for mothers. These are braided with excerpts from her vivid, lucid diary entries where her knack for capturing the essence of the moment shines. Spelman, at her core, is a healer. In Solace, you can't shake the sense that she has at last healed herself.

- Suzanne Frischkorn, author of Whipsaw and Fixed Star