Customer Reviews

Walking With Her Daughter

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4 star:		(2)
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Ms. Inclan tackles a uniquely sensitive subject-death! and the all encompassing grief that disables us humans as we wade through the muck and mire of 'what if's' and 'should have done's.'

Jenna Thomas is a 45-year-old divorced professor who has dedicated her life to Sofie, her high spirited, full of life, red-headed 20-year old daughter. Jenna's life while married to Sofie's father Mark, a doctor, was strained and never fully acknowledged or discussed during the marriage or after Mark's marriage to his new wife Renata.

With Sofie away at college and now on a trip to Bali with her boyfriend Robert, Jenna delves into her other passion-teaching. Little does Jenna know her life is about to change forever, upsetting what she thought was a good life with a job, friends and balance. Jenna must now face one of the biggest heart wrenching, gut searing, emotion ripping events of her life, losing her beloved, precious Sofie.

Jenn's emotions are so chaffed, so raw that she wants to "...bleed into the water..." until she can see her Sofie again.

With an all encompassing depression, Jenna visits Dr. Kovacic who prescribes medications to help her deal with her grief, her lack of sleep and her emotions but most importantly encourages Jenna to write in a journal.

As Jenna travels through her grief she relates and compares everyday things in life to being a Mom. Visiting her cousin, Jolie, after years of uninvolvement, Jenna views Jolie's painting studio as "a womb...a place where things are born...". The paintings anger Jenna who wants to remove them "...from the wall, smash them into parts, let her cousin feel what it was like to lose what she had made...", her daughter Sofie. Jenna's need to have everyone know and feel her pain, her suffering and her grief is crushing.

Jenna's relationship with Mark begins to change after Bali as does her relationship with her own boyfriend Tim. While attending a meditation at the Grand Canyon during a trip with Tim, Jenna believes she sees a "...circle of white light" and believes it is Sofie with her grandfather, Jenna's own passed on father.

After the meditation, Jenna make a startling discovery and must begin to acknowledge her past life, her current life and her future life. She must deal with her relationship with her ex-husband Mark, her newer relationship with Tim, her sudden reacquaintance with and just as sudden departure in her relationship with Jolie, her feelings of motherhood and whether she did it right. Did she smother Sofie? Give her too much? Protect her too often for too long? Give her the 'wings' to fly too soon?

This is a beautifully written novel of grief, desperation, the shattering of life and the new and powerful acknowledgement of change and the miracles that can happen in life.

In this fifth novel 'Walking With Her Daughter', you will experience a touching and profoundly daring story about one woman's grief, survival and hope for the future. I truly believe Ms. Inclan has outdone herself with this one!!

I just received this book as a gift and I can't wait to read it...I have read several other books by her and loved each one. If you haven't read any of her books yet you must pick one up asap...I will defiently post my review as soon as I am done...I am sure it will be just as good as the others :)

"Walking with Her Daughter" is a courageous and beautiful novel. Courageous because there is no pain on earth like that of the sudden, random death of a beloved only child. And beautiful because learning to bear that which is unbearable is the price of being human, of being capable of abiding love. Ms. Inclan tells the story of a mother's journey from the moment her dreams shatter before the sight of her collegiate daughter's lifeless body, through her ensuing day-to-day disorientation, and beyond this to the heroic efforts she makes to forge a new future over the ruins of the one that has been torn away.

I highly recommend all of Jessica Inclan's novels for their insightful rendering of our common, yet profound human nature.

This is the fourth book by Ms. Inclan that I've bought and read. As always, she tells her story beautifully and with great skill and sensitivity, although sometimes her run-on sentences make me grit my teeth (but that's a minor picky). This book tackles any parent's worst nightmare: the death of a child. And the way Sophie dies is particularly horrible. That first part of the book, where Inclan shows us Jenna's ordeal in identifying the body and grappling with the knowledge of what her beloved daughter suffered is so compelling and so terrifyingly real that I could hardly stand to read it. I was actually trembling, that's how powerful the writing was. In fact, if all I'd read was the first half of this book, I'd've wanted to give it 10 stars. Unfortunately, for me at least, the last half of the book couldn't sustain that power, and the whole meditation scene seemed too contrived to me. I also had a problem buying into Jenna's relationship with Tim. I never felt the attraction between them, whereas I did see (and feel) the connection between Jenna and Mark, her ex-husband. All in all, though, this is a book I would recommend to my daughters, sisters, and women friends, for in many ways, it's a superior story. As always, I will look forward to Ms. Inclan's next book.

Ms. Barksdale Inclan has told another compelling story set in the fictional town of Monte Veda, California. Jenna Thomas goes through a mother's nightmare: She must identify her dead daughter Sofie after Sofie is killed in a bombing accident. Jenna is heartsick, and turns to Sofie's father. What results is a chance for Jenna to begin a new life-and to try and move on when the worst has happened. Great comic relief comes in with descriptions of Jenna's students at the community college she teaches at. Fantastic work!

It's the worst thing any parent can imagine - the death of a child. Whether your child is 3 or 30, it's hard to imagine that they'll no longer be there, what sort of chasms would be left if they were suddenly taken away.

And yet, that's exactly the subject Jessica Barksdale Inclan takes on in her novel "Walking with Her Daughter," and she does so with a hand both delicate and heart-wrenchingly honest.

The book starts with Jenna Thomas, a woman whose daughter Sofie has just been killed in a bombing in Bali. Jenna, who only had the one child and whose marriage is now over (or at least in the most distant sort of weird stasis), had wrapped her whole life around Sofie, and when she goes to retrieve the body and make arrangements for its return she begins a journey.

In this journey Jenna learns how deeply Sofie's life was intertwined with her own, how there were not only newly-gaping holes of emptiness but tiny nooks and crannies of forgotten memories and untold secrets. Jenna explores her own failed marriage, the distance in her subsequent romantic relationships, and struggles to find something new that belongs only to her.

There are surprises here, but they do not come in the plot of the story. Most of the events of the story I saw coming early on, and the ending was reached with satisfying, if somewhat predictable, clarity. Jenna's ex-husband, Mark, and her new boyfriend and other characters also play important parts, but this is Jenna's story from beginning to end and the novel never loses focus on that. The surprises were in the little observations Inclan made into the life of a middle-aged woman who now had to start life over, deal with unimaginable loss, and make new choices. Inclan finds a beating heart in this woman and shows it to us, sometimes red and raw, sometimes beautiful and fragile - often both.

This is a brave story to tell, and a difficult one to read in many ways. But like many difficult stories it is worth the telling, and I'm glad to have read it.