True Confessions of the Stratford Park PTA
Nancy Robards Thompson
Harlequin Next, Oct 2006, $5.50
ISBN: 0373881126

Aunt Barbara invites her depressed widowed niece Maggie to move into the family home in Villa Magnolia, Florida. Needing a change and worried about her young daughter Maggie accepts the offer and does. Barbara hopes that having relatives will help her with her late in life Downs Syndrome child as her spouse is too busy chasing women to care about either of them. Their neighbor Elizabeth is a supermom and super wife, but her perfect life imploded when she learns she is pregnant.

These three women have secrets that they hide from everyone. Slowly as they bond as sisters with their link being their daughters, this trio of mothers reveals to one another their biggest fears and strongest desires which does not include joining the Stratford Park PTA.

This is a well written character study that rotates the first person point of view between the three females. The key to the tale is that the trio seems real with their secrets, their concerns and fears, and their relationships especially with one anther and their daughters, yet each has differing personalities. Nancy Robards Thompson provides a solid look at motherhood.

Harriet Klausner