Books for Motherless Daughters (and others too)

I started thinking about making a list like this because in various groups and talking to my sisters I am always recommending books, movies, music that has helped me.
Either these help me dredge up feelings that I bury otherwise, or make me feel less alone.

Kari and I talked about this list and she added several others

Books
The Wild Girls, by Pat Murphy
* this is a book for the 12-year-old that I still feel like I am, because that's when my mom first got really sick (in the coma).
And for those whose mothers left them as children or are emotionally distant, there's a lot of stuff relevant to them here too...

Motherless Daughters and Motherless Mothers, by Hope Edelman
These are both great books - Motherless Daughters is divided up by age the person was they lost their mother. We find in our group that people sometimes don't feel ready to read these for a while, it's just too close.

Summer of the Great-Grandmother, by Madeleine L'Engle
L'Engle is best known for "A Wrinkle in Time" and the rest of her Time Trilogy, as well as many books for adults. This is one of her Crosswicks Journals, about the summer when her mother was declining into senility and they brought her north to their house (Crosswicks) to take care of her before her death.
This is a great book for everyone and especially for those with a recent loss -- L'Engle remembers the mother she knew, and her mother's past, that she doesn't really know. And talks about how hard it is to take care of a mother who's sometimes herself, and something not.

The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
This book is about the year after Joan's husband suddenly died in their house, while she was making dinner. I was moved by this book because she has feelings that I thought only kids who experienced loss were having (like extreme guilt about not being able to help, and wanting to save his shoes because of a fantasy that he'll come back and get them)

The City, Not Long After, by Pat Murphy
The main character in this book loses her mother, and then goes to San Francisco to warn the city of an impending invasion (she and her mother were trying to do this when she died).
Oh, by the way, there's been a plague in SF so it's back to a more agrarian trading existence. The girl (Jax) finds the house where her mother lived and feels her presence there. I guess I also like it because she's very self-reliant but learns to get help from people (which I have trouble with)

The Magician's Nephew, by C.S. Lewis
One of the Chronicles of Narnia - in this book Digory's mother is sick, but he is able to bring her a magic apple and she gets better! Oh wish fulfillment! Of course she doesn't live forever, but she does get better.
C.S. Lewis' mother died when he was a child.

The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis
Another Chronicle of Narnia, the last. Our pastor (whose mom also died when he was a kid) finally showed us that he had actually read all of the series, when he used the below when he spoke at our mom's funeral:
All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before.