Our ​“Year in Provence”: this is how Katie Hafn­er, a New York Times writer and sin­gle moth­er, described her hopes when her own 77-year-old moth­er moved in with her and her teenage daugh­ter in the wake of a life cri­sis. But with­in a few months, this exper­i­ment in multi­gen­er­a­tional liv­ing had turned into a Half-Year in Hell. The sto­ry of the expe­ri­ence of three gen­er­a­tions of women try­ing to live under one roof is by turns poignant, fun­ny, heart wrench­ing, and, ulti­mate­ly, life affirm­ing. The cen­tral ques­tion of Moth­er Daugh­ter Me is this: What is our oblig­a­tion to our par­ents as they age, par­tic­u­lar­ly if those par­ents gave us a tru­ly awful child­hood? The fam­i­ly ties so cen­tral to Jew­ish think­ing — and par­tic­u­lar­ly vital for the author and her daugth­er — give this tale a spe­cial res­o­nance to JBC audi­ences. In the end, the book is a sto­ry of redemp­tion, accep­tance, and com­ing to terms with the flawed peo­ple who hap­pen to be our fam­i­ly members.