Fatherless Women: How We Change After We Lose Our Dads

The bond between father and daughter can be one of the strongest either family member will experience in his or her lifetime. In Fatherless Women, Clea Simon, a writer for the Boston Globe, examines challenges daughters face when this relationship is severed by the death of the father. With all but one chapter focusing on women who have lost their fathers after adulthood, Fatherless Women traces the father-daughter relationship and how it manifests as a girl grows up, how it affects her, and what that relationship leaves behind when it's gone. Simon describes some of her own experiences and discusses, with an emphasis on pervasive trends, the immediate changes that can take place within one or two years after the death of a father. By delving into every aspect of a woman's life, both personal and professional, Simon covers a multitude of topics, including how women mourn in order to resolve father-daughter issues, changing mother-daughter relationships, trends of family commitment following this loss, challenges marriages face after the loss, refining needs in response to death, and how goals can change after losing a father. The book ends with "The Journey over Time," describing how bereaved daughters often incorporate elements of their fathers into their own lives and families over time. --Rhonda Langdon