This book is a candid family saga that weaves together conflict and redemption. Maggie is a widow, and her four adult children are navigating their own complicated lives while blaming their parents for the way they were raised. In the unexpected company of a nurse who is hired to help her while she is recovering from an accident, Maggie encounters a young person who is unlike her children in almost every respect. Disarmed by the acceptance of her young companion, Maggie sorts through the rubble of her memories and reveals secrets she has kept from her own children because she feared their judgment and rejection. Discovering the courage that comes from facing her own ghosts, Maggie mends family relationships where she can and makes room in her heart to accept her family as it is.
Mary VanderGoot is a psychologist, marriage and family therapist, and addictions counselor and trainer. She has been a professor of psychology, a prison educator, and a caseworker for International Red Cross Services for tracing missing persons. She is the author of After Freedom: How Boomers Pursued Freedom, Questioned Virtue, and Still Search for Meaning (2012).
“Broken Glass weaves a delicate tapestry of generations within a single family as seen by its aged materfamilias who wishes to understand and reckon with those she loves most. It is throughout tender, moving, and without mush, the narrator knowing too much to condemn or sanctify anyone, including herself. Within these mysteries of selfhood and family are events of wonder, pathos, and delight—in short, the splendor and puzzle of being alive. Bravo.”
—Roy M. Anker, author of Beautiful Light: Religious Meaning in Film
“In Broken Glass, Mary VanderGoot offers us Maggie, who helps us find the extraordinary in the ordinary as she reminisces about her family. We find a narrator that is all of us as we come to terms with loss, getting older, and the legacy we leave behind as we navigate ground that is covered with the broken glass of our regrets. Mary VanderGoot has written a powerful and hopeful book that will stay with me long after its final pages.”
—Ruben Degollado, author of Throw
“Mary VanderGoot thoughtfully describes the complexities of life and relationships in a way that guides the reader to a sympathetic understanding of each character.”
—Julie Yonker, Associate Professor of Psychology, Calvin University