Praise for Returning to My Mother’s House
In this feminist memoir Gail Straub memorializes her mother’s unfulfilled life. As she untangles these threads, she processes her grief over her mother’s death.... For all those interested in women’s issues and spirituality.
–Library Journal Book Review
Gail Straub challenges the reader to look closely into one’s life to discover, through inward reflection, the “unbound flame” that is in us all. She does this by opening the window into her complex, private, and deeply compelling stories. Straub shows that life is not just about the daily task of existing through the empirical senses but searching for authenticity and gaining feminine wisdom through exploration of inner realities.
–ForeWord Magazine Book Review
This is a wonderfully crafted narrative that takes readers from her mother’s too-short life into her own battles and brilliance via self-examination. Written in a smooth voice that shifts through time and conflict, Straub’s return to her roots is a transcendental journey that speaks to the desire and potential of women everywhere.
–Metro Spirit, Augusta’s Independent Voice
Straub’s luminous story is for anyone who has ever struggled to build and sustain an interior life in our driven and fast paces society, and for mothers and daughters everywhere.
–The Chicago Monthly Aspectarian
In this intensely personal memoir, Empowerment Institute co-director and bestselling author Straub explores her complex relationship with her mother, a rebellious artist who lost her sense of self. She also examines her own life choices, including a conscious decision not to have children, channeling her maternal energies into other forms of nurture.
–Chronogram: Hudson Valley Arts, Culture, Spirit
Many years after her mother’s premature death, Straub embarked on a soul-searching mission, traveling to Africa, Bali, Russia, China, and Ireland, and everywhere finding that women felt much like her: longing for sacred wisdom. She tells her story poetically, depicting the difficulties faced by anyone-male or female –struggling to maintain a rich interior life in our times.
–Woodstock Times
