The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone by Randy Susan Meyers ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

Seven Children. Five Mothers. One idyllic commune. What could go wrong?

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

October 2024; Koehler Books; 979-8888245354
ebook, print (366 pages); women's fiction

I'll say right at the beginning that I loved this book and if possible I would give it more than 5 stars.  It's one of my favorite books of 2024.  This book gave me a 'book hangover' and I couldn't start a new book for a few days because the characters stayed lodged in my mind long after the last page.  It's a book about mothers and daughters and how working to make the world a better place can cause upheavals that exist for generations.

Annabel  Cooper's goal is to save the world.  It's 1964 and there are fights for civil rights and women's rights, and a huge part of America is beginning to realize that the war in Vietnam is an unjust war. Annabel goes to Mississippi to work with other college kids to help black people register to vote.  This was a scary time in the South with the KKK and many of the policemen trying to keep them from voting and they resorted to violence in many cases to stop the work of the Freedom Fighters.  After a tumultuous summer, she returns to college and marries Guthrie who she met that summer.  She and Guthrie both work in various areas to do their part to save the world.  When they find out that Annabel is pregnant, decisions have to be made and they decide to move into a house with 5 other activist couples and several children.  The group holds meetings to establish rules so that everyone is treated fairly.  After the Kent State shooting in 1970, they all decided that they had to do something radical to keep their children safe.  They fixed up a barn owned by one of the members and sent their 7 children to live there with one of the mothers.  The children were pretty much free to do what they wanted and the parents felt that this would keep them safe.  But the children didn't feel that way - they were young and they wanted their mothers.  Ivy couldn't understand why she rarely saw her parents.  Ivy's chapters in this book are the most touching.  Where her mom was a person who wanted change, Ivy was much more of a deep thinker and didn't really understand why the children were sent to Vermont.   After something terrible happens, Ivy and her brother go back to living with their parents but they have to work hard to become family again.  Will they be able to mesh their lives back together again?

This book takes place over a 40-year time span from 1964 through Covid in 2020.  It was interesting to see the growth of both Annabel and Ivy over the years as they struggled to find their places in the ever-changing world.  Both women were well-written and felt like good friends by the end of the book.  Annabel especially reminded me of women I knew in college in the  60s and I felt like we could sit down and have lunch together.

This book was a beautiful and well-written look at mothers and daughters and the way that the world affects their relationship with each other but ultimately their love for each other brings them together.  I find myself still thinking about the characters and events in the book long after I finished it.  For me, who usually can't remember the name of the book that I'm currently reading, this shows what a great book this is.  This is a book that you don't want to miss.

Buy The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone at Amazon

Susan Roberts grew up in Michigan but loves the laid-back life at her home in the Piedmont area of North Carolina where she is two hours from the beach to the east and the mountains in the west.  She reads almost anything but her favorite genres are Southern Fiction and Historical Fiction.   

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