Poetic and provocative, a challenge to women to create more spiritually rich and balanced lives.A successful writer and a committed feminist, Kathleen Hirsch, at age forty, finds herself searching for something more. How, she asks, can women's lives be more spiritually alive and whole? Can we reclaim in our most productive years what we sacrificed to earlier ideas of success? What is the place of silence and creativity in our busy lives?
Unable to trek to Tibet or retreat to a cabin in the woods, she enters a season of reflection in the midst of her everyday life. A career crisis, the sudden death of a brother, and the birth of her son, all in a year's time, deepen her probing. Hirsch examines the role of women's friendships and the definition of worthwhile work. Her inner pilgrimage gradually moves her to seek out a range of remarkable women who are consciously trying to live in balance. They lead her to bold conclusions that will inspire many women who are seeking realistic ways to live more multidimensional lives.Beautifully written, "A Sabbath Life" will serve as A Gift from the Sea for the twenty-first century.

This remarkable collection of twenty stories about motherhood by writers who are mothers evokes every stage of the journey, from pregnancy and birth through the childhood years, adolescence, and adulthood. Together they depict the complexity of mothering in America today as woman are actually experience it.
The works gathered here constitute a step toward a new mothers literature that puts to rest the long-held myth that has separated motherhood from a woman's creativity. In these pages women from all walks of life, single, married, divorced or just out of their teens and well into their eighties, rich and poor, black and white, grapple with the realities of motherhood - sacrifice and boundless joy, self-doubt and miracles of the every day. Whether you are a new mother, a seasoned mother, or a grandmother many times over you will find yourself in this book.
Contributors: Mary Grimm, Laurie Colwin, Perri Klass, Kate Braverman, Molly Giles, Mary Gordon, Ronnie Sandroff, Roxana Robinson, Barbara Kingsolver, Marian Thurm, Paula K. Gover, Marsha Lee Berkman, Melissa Pritchard, Jane Shapiro, Julia Whitty, Alice Elliott Dark, J. California Cooper, Sue Miller, Eileen Fitzgerald.