The Christmas Clock and A Song For My Mother - Kat Martin Page 0,79

If having a daughter of my own hadn't forced me to confront the past, to acknowledge the deep and abiding love I felt for my mother and to realize how deeply she had always loved me. How grateful I am that fate interceded and brought us back together, allowing me to tell her the way I felt.

How thankful I am that the song I wrote for my mother did not remain unsung.

Author’s Note

I'd like to thank you all for revisiting Dreyerville in A Song for My Mother, a story written about the special bond between mothers and their children.

Ionia, Michigan, was again my inspiration, a lovely little town in the heartland that in many ways seems not to have changed since the turn of the nineteenth century. If you enjoyed this book and haven't read The Christmas Clock, the first in my Dreyerville series, I hope you will look for it.

If inspiration strikes, it is my fond wish to write another Dreyerville story, perhaps one set around the Fourth of July, one of my favorite holidays.

Till then, all best wishes and happy reading.

Kat

A Conversation with Kat Martin

What was the inspiration for the title, A Song for My Mother? Is there a particular song that inspired you to write this novel about the complex relationships between mothers and their children?

Actually, the title is a metaphor. It speaks to the trouble children have in communicating the love they feel for their parents. In this story, Marly has never expressed her love for her mother. As the tale begins, it is a song that remains unsung.

Readers of your previous book, The Christmas Clock, will be delighted to revisit the town of Dreyerville in this story. Did you know that you would return to this setting? Why? What does this town represent to you?

I didn't start out with Dreyerville in mind for the second book but after visiting the small Michigan town that is, in reality, Ionia, just east of Grand Rapids, I knew I wanted to go back. The charming, nineteenth-century village represents old- fashioned values, the days when honesty, courage, loyalty, and integrity were more valuable than they seem to be today. Eventually, I may do more Dreyerville stories.

What are some of the challenges of writing a novella versus a novel and how did you deal with them?

As I tend to write sparsely in all of my books, writing a novella poses less of a problem for me, perhaps, than for other authors. I'm a person who loves brevity, which is clear in my novels. Less is more to me. In a story as poignant as this one, the novella works perhaps better than a full-length novel.

You have created wonderfully flawed female characters in A Song for My Mother. They have complicated relationships, make tough life-changing decisions, and are at times pretty hard on themselves. What do you hope to teach your readers through each of these extraordinary women?

I tend to think of women in general as being strong, tough, and solid—the sort often forced to deal with difficulty and make hard decisions. Maybe younger women haven't yet realized the problems they will likely face at some point in their lives. Perhaps a story like this teaches that whatever happens, they can face the situation and overcome it.

Marly and Emily are both mothers who also work outside the home. What are your thoughts about working mothers? Did you hope to portray them in a specific way in the book?

Having been raised by a working mother, I understand the difficulties faced by mothers who work outside the home. Being out in the real world, often being confronted with even greater challenges than their male counterparts, tends to make working women strong and resilient, just as Marly has become and Emily is becoming.

You tackle some tough subject matter such as alcohol abuse, death, and cancer while also sharing some very sweet and tender moments of love and family. What is your objective in showing such diverse life experiences?

As I answer these questions, the clearer it becomes that one of the underlying themes of the story is that life makes us stronger. And I am fairly certain that almost all of us share very diverse and often difficult life experiences. Perhaps reading about other people’s experiences makes our own problems more bearable.

There are three grieving widows or widowers in the book: Reed, Winnie, and Emily. But each character copes with his or her own loss in a different way. What is the message in the book about dealing with painful memories and facing life's challenges?

I hope the message is that whatever helps us get through the tough times is all right. It doesn't matter how we deal with grief as long as it helps us get through it. That is what life is about. Living, dying, and just carrying on in the face of adversity.

Do you think A Song for My Mother would make a good Mother’s Day gift? Why?

I think it would be a very nice gift. The book says what children and parents often can’t find a way to say to each other. It talks about enduring love, the kind that bridges the difficult gaps that sometimes develop between family members over the years. Aside from that, it’s an uplifting, feel-good story. Which, with so many problems in the world today, is always the best kind, I think.

Winnie makes a decision early in the book to protect her daughter from her father’s secret past. Do you think all mothers should do whatever they can to protect their children from adversity, or is it better to confront hardships as they come our way?

It is probably better to confront hardships when they happen, but as Winnie believed about Marly, sometimes a child isn’t ready to deal with difficult truths until she is older and perhaps a little wiser.

If you could sum up the message in A Song for My Mother, what would it be?

Being a parent is a difficult task. There are no maps, no guidelines. Parents have to find their own way, do the best they can. The decisions they make are not always the right ones, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love their children. And it is that bond between parent and child that holds a family together.

A Look at: Tin Angel

In this rollicking western romance, written by New York Times bestselling author Kat Martin, with husband L. J. Martin, Jessica Taggart, fresh out of a Boston finishing school, comes West…to discover the "restaurant" she's inherited from her late father is actually a saloon and bawdy house! And to add to the insult, it's run by a handsome rogue, Jake Weston, who owns 49% of Taggart Enterprises.

AVAILABLE NOW ON AMAZON

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Thank you for taking the time to read The Christmas Clock and A Song For My Mother: A Kat Martin Duo. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a short review. Word of mouth is an author's best friend and much appreciated.

Thank you.

Kat Martin

About the Author

Kat Martin is the New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty-five romantic suspense, historical and contemporary romance novels. To date there are over 15 million copies of her books in print in seventeen countries, including Sweden, France, Russia, Spain, Japan, Argentina, Poland, and Greece. Kat and her husband, author L. J. Martin, live on their ranch outside Missoula, Montana, and spend winters at their beach house in California.