BeSSie Is My Mother’s Name is a compelling and inspiring story that takes you back into the recesses of Julia’s childhood. It is told through such vivid memories through such tiny eyes.

It is a riveting story of a child taken from her parents, at the age of 21 months by Children Services and placed in foster care. It was that experience that made her journey through heartache and loss worth it. The angels that took her and her twin brother in were named the Bennett.

While living with the Bennetts, Julia grew to be a loving child. She loved her foster parents with all her heart, not realizing they were not her biological parents. However, around the age of four, a strange woman came to their house and claimed to be their mother; Julia could not accept that statement as fact and spent her childhood trying to disprove it.

Although the stories extend three generations of love, betrayal, heartbreak and forgiveness for Julia and her siblings, don’t fret because you too can seek refuge within any of the characters as you imagine yourself in Julia’s shoes while pondering what you would have done in her situation. Expect to develop your own favorite characters and memories as you read the pages of their life with Bessie and the other five siblings. I encourage you to seize from this story an inference that even in the darkest places of our existence, a light shines upon your spirit and it soothes you as nothing else can. For Julia, fond memories of a loving foster parent and his bedtime stories of overcoming life’s lessons gave her faith to believe a life filled with love is possible and attainable.

We end the book with Julia’s own family and her siblings as adults with parenting issues that are now considered part of life. And, we acknowledge her two beautiful children, Sheree Whitfield and Douglas Fuller. I would be thoughtless if I didn’t acknowledge my daughter’s own creativity, Sheree who is creating her own reality on The Real Housewives of Atlanta and I am proud to be her mother.

Happy reading.
Thelma Ferguson