Mothers. Our relationship with them bring smiles, tears, joy, pain, regret. That relationship may well be the most influential of our life, shaping us from birth to adulthood and sometimes beyond. And there were probably  days when, as a teenager,  we wished our mother was some one else.

If you’ve read the first two books in my Family Secret Series — Cobwebs and Ant Dens— you know that my main character, Jamie Aldrich, has a strained relationship with her mother. The woman is secretive, sarcastic, and prone to laying guilt trips of the nth degree on her daughter, Jamie.

She refuses to talk about the past, whether it’s her childhood or her early married years. Since Jamie’s father is deceased, Jamie has nowhere to go to get the ‘scoop’ on her mother. And her sister is no help; she wants to respect her mother’s privacy.

In Cobwebs, Jamie and her mother struggle over the family history.  Jamie’s aunt becomes comatose soon after Jamie arrives for a visit, soon after she has alluded to Jamie that her whole life was a ‘sham.’ Her search to discover the meaning of that word uncovers long-buried  family history, criminal deceit and a web of her own forgotten memories.

In Ant Dens, Jamie struggles to keep her deceased husband’s name untarnished. Her stepdaughter goes missing, and it is up to Jamie, with the unwanted assistance of the girl’s mother, to discover who might have taken the girl. Has she been trafficked, or is it all related to something her husband was involved in over twenty years before?

And now, in Beehives, Jamie and her mother are struggling once again, when Jamie uncovers an inscription on an old wall at an Oklahoma State Park near her mother’s hometown. Who was the man who loved her mother? As usual, her mother refuses to answer Jamie’s questions, and only increases the intrigue by reacting to the name of the park’s resident hermit, Bridget, who has recently been found deceased. Jamie believes her mother may know more than she’s saying, if she can only get her to talk.

What will Jamie’s relationship with her mother be like now, once so many of the secret’s of her mother’s early life have been revealed? Stay tuned — for the next Family Secret Series story!