I enjoyed Ms. Weltner's book for a number of reasons. However, at this point in my own life, with aging parents and growing children, I find particular interest in her sharing of her own family experiences. I watch my own relationships change and bend, and I believe the more we share our experiences, the more we have to draw on for our own life and times.

Linda shares a poem she wrote "The Crone". I absolutely loved it, and have shared it with several friends. It represents the voices of older and aging women in our society, who have been cast aside because of age. A wonderful refusal to give in, to give up.

I would recommend the book for all who enjoy the personal touch. I like to come away with something from every book I read. If it is a new thought to ponder, or an old rememberance to recall, I feel I have enjoyed my reading time.

Linda Weltner writes crisp prose peppered in humor and irony. She seems to be a student of life, who examines and dissects the relationships in her life. She is insightful, moving and very intelligent. Family Puzzles : A Private Life Made Public is engaging because it provides the reader with an honest look at Linda's private life and tribulations. And although we may pick up this book intending to be a voyeur, we finish it a friend and fan of Linda Weltner.

I read this book when my second and last child started kindergarten and I was wrestling between the idea of getting a job and fulfilling my life-long desire to write. Linda Weltner was a stay-at-home Mom like me, who wrote about her family and her life as a writer/homemaker. She made her life sound so attractive! She inspired me to write personal essays about my own family. In my book, DREAM WEAVING: USING DREAM GUIDANCE TO CREATE LIFE'S TAPESTRY, I wrote: "...when snow-filled streets kept me inside, reading ...the personal essays of Linda Weltner ... I realized that, throughout the years in which I'd nurtured my children, my soul was being fed by the wellspring of motherhood. The ideas I had culled from reading, journaling, and contemplation had been taking life in the dim recesses of my being, like the wintering roots of one of my perennial plants."