A gripping story based on the maternal side of the author’s family. More fact than fiction, this riveting tale exposes a peculiar tradition of abuse passed down from generation to generation until finally it is broken by Steed, the present-day character. Each mother singles out one particular daughter as the recipient of all her anger and frustration. When that daughter has children, she does the same to one particular daughter of her own. And where there are just two children, she chooses the daughter over the son.
This is a moving tale—a tragedy of tenderness withheld. Tenderness withheld by the mother from just one of her children while the other children thrive. And the tragedy of tenderness witnessed by the deprived daughter as not forthcoming from her own mother.
Unexplored and unresolved feelings of unworthiness, sadness, and anger carried from one generation to the next. The inescapable child-bearing and child-rearing thwarted any dreams each woman might have had. And for this lineage of high-spirited Southern women, they wanted more than children.
In "The Last Daughter" each woman tells her story in her own voice, revealing the trauma of pain, hardship and neglect in their lives. Yet their accounts could give voice to all women, throughout history and now, who have been denied freedom and individual rights. However, in spite of what each character has had to endure, each one still prevails in her own way as a strong-willed and independent spirit.
The book begins in the 1800s with Steed’s great-great-great-grandmother, Emily, and follows the two-hundred-year cycle through six generations. Recognizing the pattern, and terrified of repeating it, Steed sees only one way out. And this time it is the tragedy of tenderness withheld from herself. She makes a conscious decision to not have children, thus becoming the last daughter. And instead, Steed devotes her life to searching for the truth and finding answers to her own demons.
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