As I tap on my keyboard, rain pounds the skylights. Moments ago, the intolerable South Carolina heat melted into a torrential downpour. Lightening frizzes the afternoon sky; the heavens grumble as gods clear their voice. This is a summer gift -- wrapped in heavy dark clouds and delivered at the end of a searing day -- an afternoon thunder storm, and in its glorious wake, ion-smelling air rinsed clean of humidity, if only for a little while.
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There is still time to read this summer! Literary Mamas share what they are reading right now. Enjoy!

Download the list to find it fast at your local bookstore or library.
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The joy of his words, spoken or signed, compounds, and masks at first that he is turning inward. I record what he says in a journal but eventually it becomes apparent that what I'm noting is a decline. The words and signs, every single one, begin over the course of two years to slip away; clutching after them and writing them down does nothing to stop the burgeoning, negating silence. The words become silvery and slippery, fast as fish, then vanish. Silence swells around us, and the sound of his voice, when it does come, reminds us how long it's been since we've heard it.
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The summer my mother fell through the sky, she appeared deceptively earthbound. She had always floated just slightly above the surface of things, so that sometimes I wanted to wrap my arms around her waist and hold on, to be her anchor. But for those final weeks of summer, my mother had walked leaving footprints wherever she went. I was reassured by the dirt beneath her fingernails, the way her muscles flexed animal-like beneath her tanned skin. She left the scent of roses and dandelions in any room she passed through. It filled the emptiness where my father's pine aftershave and gasoline-sweat presence should have been.
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she floats away from me
a leaf from her tree
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Susan Estrich is a nationally syndicated columnist, political commentator for Fox News, professor of law and political science at the University of Southern California, practicing attorney, and path-breaker. Estrich made her mark on the legal landscape 20 years ago with her first publication, Real Rape: How the Legal System Victimizes Women Who Say No, which is still assigned in law schools as the authoritative text on rape law. Teacher and freelance writer Cynthia Dobbs sat down with Estrich to discuss the power of narrative, how motherhood informs her writing and what it takes to write well.
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How refreshing it was to open Gravity Pulls You In, a new collection of essays and poems about parenting children on the autism spectrum. Gravity is the table at the coffeehouse where I sat with other mothers. Gravity is the support group meeting, and the friend on the other end of the telephone who knew just what I was going through.
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