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Mother of Pearl: Luminous Lessons and Iridescent Faith

  
About the Book: 
Like oysters, women often encounter unexpected grit during their everyday lives. In response, God’s love and grace covers this grit and transforms the pain into a precious pearl that leaves a layered, luminous lining within a shell: Mother of Pearl. This brilliant luster is strong, lasting, and purposeful—just like the love, lessons, and legacies left by the special women in our lives.

Mother of Pearl celebrates the collective iridescence of motherhood. Margaret McSweeney presents a collection of heartfelt vignettes from authors who communicate the importance of the unique relationships between mothers and their children, between granddaughters and grandmothers and between children and the mother-figures in their lives.

These stories tell of the power of faith, prayer, and values, exploring coming of age, the joy of becoming a mother, the importance of motherhood, the ways to heal from a bad relationship with a mother and weathering the death of a special loved one. Poignant and thought-provoking, the stories serve to inspire, encourage, instill hope, and strengthen faith.

The proceeds from the sale of Mother of Pearl will be donated to organizations helping struggling women and children. The charities include Wings (Women in Need Growing Stronger) to help fund the Safe House in the Chicago suburbs and to Hands of Hope to help build wells for schoolchildren in Zambia.

 
Meet Margaret: 
Margaret McSweeney is a well-published author often writing online articles for Make It Better (the former North Shore Magazine) and freelance articles for the Daily Herald, the largest suburban Chicago newspaper. In addition, she has authored and compiled several books including A Mother’s Heart Knows; Go Back and Be Happy; Pearl Girls: Encountering Grit, Experiencing Grace, Mother of Pearl and Aftermath.

With a master’s degree from the University of South Carolina in international business, Margaret became a vice-president in the corporate finance division of a New York City bank and worked there 1986–93.

As founder of Pearl Girls, Margaret collaborates with other writers on projects to help fund a safe house for WINGS, an organization that helps women and their children who are victims of domestic violence, and to build wells for schoolchildren in Uganda through Hands of Hope. For the past 10 years she has served on the board of directors and leadership advisory board for WINGS. Margaret lives with her husband and 2 daughters in the Chicago suburbs. www.pearlgirls.info

MY REVIEW:
This book is a wonderful collection of motherhood stories. The delicate relationship between mothers and daughters...between grandmothers and granddaughters are shared by 57 different women, including several well-known authors such as Robin Jones Gunn, Debora M. Coty, Suzanne Woods Fisher, and Tricia Goyer. I enjoyed reading the book. Each story is only about 2-3 pages long. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there's such a variety of takes on this one theme (mother of pearl). Faith and family are the main focus. Each story is interesting and inspiring. One of them even made me cry. In "Mother Knows Best", Karen O'Connor describes the cremation of her mother. It triggered my grief about my dad's death because I just had a similar experience in June of this year. Check out this heart-warming, uplifting book and support a great cause at the same time :)!

FACEBOOK PARTY:
To celebrate the release of Mother of Pearl: Luminous Lessons and Iridescent Faith, Margaret McSweeney is hosting an evening of chat, laughter, and encouragement on Facebook!

She has invited the Pearl Girl contributors to join us on the evening of September 4th. She'd be so honored if you'd come too!

We'll be giving away a ton of fun stuff {books, gift certificates and a Beautiful Pearl Necklace set}.

Mother of Pearl celebrates the collective iridescence of motherhood. We'll gather to connect, be encouraged and make some new friends!

So RSVP today and then come back on September 4th (at 5pm Pacific, 6pm Mountain, 7pm Central, and 8pm Eastern) and join us for the "Pearl" party. Let's share our stories and encourage one another.

We'll also have an update from the charities involved with Pearl Girls, Wings and Hands of Hope.

(See what others are saying about Mother of Pearl.)

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