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My mother, whom I love dearly, has continually revised my life story within the context of a complicated family history that includes more than the usual share of divorce, step-children, dysfunction, and obfuscation. I've spent most of my adult life attempting to deconstruct that history and separate fact from fiction.

My mother wrote a book. Unfortunately, it ended up being published posthumously. But I'm glad she did, because it taught me a lot about my family that, otherwise, I probably wouldn't know.

My mother always said that everyone should be required to write an autobiography of their lives.

Before she married my father, my mother was a film reviewer for The Akron Beacon Journal - a small newspaper.

He had written my mother once that he wanted her to be the first thing he saw every morning and the last thing he ever saw. And that's how it turned out.

My mother wrote lyrics and sang but was overtaken by life with four children and worked.

My mother married my father in 1956. She was twenty-eight, and he was thirty-one. She loved him with a fierce steadiness borne of loyalty, determination, and an unyielding dignity.

My mother carried on and supported us; her ambition had been to write poetry and songs.

Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had a contract for my first novel - that was on my answering phone message when I got back from the hospital with my first child.

If my mother hadn't been trying to be a writer, I don't know if I would have thought of it myself.