Wasatch County Library

A candid, feminist, and personal deep dive into the science and culture of pregnancy and motherhood

Like most first-time mothers, Angela Garbes was filled with questions when she became pregnant. What exactly is a placenta and how does it function? How does a body go into labor? Why is breast best? Is wine totally off-limits? But as she soon discovered, it's not easy to find satisfying answers. Your obstetrician will cautiously

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"There is really no better indicator you're a mother than acquiring the ability to catch throw-up in a plastic bag, disinfect your hands, and immediately ask your friend to pass the beef jerky as you put on another Taylor Swift song and act as if nothing has happened."
This is the type of insight Melanie Shankle offers in this quirky memoir of motherhood.
Written in the familiar, stream-of-consciousness style of her blog, Big Mama, Sparkly...

"From the outside, everyone might think Fern and Rose are as close as twin sisters can be: Rose is the responsible one, with a home and a husband and a fierce desire to become a mother. Fern is the quirky one, the free spirit, the librarian who avoids social interaction and whom the world might just describe as truly odd. But the sisters are devoted to one another and Rose has always been Fern's protector from the time they were small. Fern needed...

From the best-selling author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait comes a spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood.

"An exquisitely sensual tale of love, motherhood, and other forms of madness, The Hand That First Held Mine will unsettle, move, and haunt you." —Emma Donoghue, author of Room

Lexie Sinclair is plotting an extraordinary

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"A promise could betray you. It's 2008, and the rise of Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He's eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to--and abandoned--when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she'd never look back, but Ruth knows that to move forward, she must make...

"It's 1924 South Carolina and the region is still recovering from the infamous boll weevil infestation that devastated the land and the economy. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters from starvation or die at the hands of an abusive husband. Retta is navigating a harsh world as a first-generation freed slave, still employed by the Coles, influential plantation proprietors who once owned her family....

Motherhood is full of uncertainty. What do my children really need? Why are they doing that? Is this normal? What can I do to help them? How can I know for certain that I am doing this right?

The logistics are easy. Anybody can do laundry and carpool. But what makes a mother the best mom she can be?

It's not better scheduling. Or more activities. Or less.

It is passion—the passion

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The story of one young mother's honest account of the desperate feelings experienced in motherhood and one experienced mentor's realistic and gentle exhortations that were forged in the trenches of raising her own four children.

Jill Farrow is a typical suburban mom who has finally gotten her and her daughter's lives back on track after a divorce. She is about to remarry, her job as a pediatrician fulfills her--though it is stressful--and her daughter, Megan, is a happily over-scheduled thirteen-year-old juggling homework and the swim team. But Jill's life is turned upside down when her ex-stepdaughter, Abby, shows up on her doorstep late one night and delivers shocking news:...