Heart to Heart Stories for Moms

by Joe L. Wheeler (Editor)

Heart to Heart Stories for Moms is a deeply moving collection of stories about the strongest, purest form of love in the world--the love of a mother. These timeless tales of mothers, stepmothers, surrogate mothers, and mentors will inspire laughter, tears, and thoughtful reflections about the importance of the kind of nurturing only a mom--or mother figure--can give. Includes colorful interior and illustrations. "Long ago, Mrs. C. T. Cole said it `The mother's face is the child's first heaven.' This collection of stories is about the many faces of mother-love that constitute a child's heaven. I hope that, in reading them, you will better understand what it is that God intended a mother to be in her children's lives." --Joe L. Wheeler

304 pages, Hardcover

First published February 12, 2000

About the author

Joe Wheeler has been labeled many things: as Father Christmas because of his editing/compiling America’s longest-running Christmas of story series — Christmas in My Heart (now in its 18th season); as one of America’s leading story anthologists (56 story collections by twelve publishing houses); as the world’s foremost authority on life and times of the frontier writer Zane Grey (he is co-founder and executive director of the international Zane Grey’s West Society); as a biographer, having written full-length biographies of Abraham Lincoln and St. Nicholas and shorter biographies of Louisa May Alcott, Abbie Farwell Brown, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Gene Stratton Porter, Grace Richmond, Henryk Sienkiewicz, and Lew Wallace; and as a Renaissance Man because of his encyclopedic interest in everything (popular culture as well as the academic); and his master’s degree in the teaching of History, his master’s degree in English (thesis on Utopian and Dystopian literature), and his Vanderbilt doctorate in English (History of Ideas emphasis).

Because of all these variables, and stirring in his 71 books (and counting), this blog series promises to be unlike any other — and that’s why he titles the series, “UNCHARTED WATERS.”

Reviews

[Sarah]

This is a review for only one story in the volume--the last, by Wheeler himself--which I can't remember the name of. My mom wanted me to read it because much of it was set in places in Greece I've visited. Yes, I enjoyed being reminded of the Lion Gate in Mycenae, but my overall review of this story must come in the words of Margaret Edson in the play W;t: "A melodrama with a veneer of scholarship unworthy of you." (Wheeler, I believe, has a PhD in literature, so, yes, I expect actual engagement with ideas as well as proficient prose.)

If I were grading the story for an undergrad creative writing class, it would get an A for readability, but if I were a publisher I would never publish something with such an obviously black and white world view, featuring characters who are sympathetic primarily because they "love the Lord" and prefer traditional gender roles. This is the kind of neatly wrapped-up, sentimental story that will make its readers feel cultured from reading tidbits about Justinian and Theodora, but it will never actually challenge their thinking, their relationships, or even their aesthetics.

[Esther Dakum · Rating 4 out of 5]

So loving, I held this story in my heart for years