c.b. calico

            What do women learn from their mothers? Everything they want to be and everything they don’t. After all, not all mothers are created equal.

            In C.B. Calico’s stunning new contemporary fiction novel, Dandelion Angel, we meet four German women brought together by the pain of their mothers. Each matriarch suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder—a condition their daughters never knew had a name when they were growing up. They wish they had. They wish someone had told them this was treatable, or that other girls were being raised like they were: isolated, confused, and completely unsure of their worth.

            Caren has known all her life that her mother, Ute, cannot be pleased. Yet, she tries. Even in her thirties, she will do anything to gain her approval; she’ll even risk her marriage. But, Ute’s own wounds, buried in layers of history and tragedy, go too deep. 

            To the outside world, Irja’s childhood looked like a dream. A famous actress for a mother, trips to Disneyland, she had it all. They didn’t see her mother’s rages, her tantrums and insults. Irja suffered it all, quietly, until her mother’s cruelty threatened Irja’s own son. With the instincts of a lioness, she finally breaks, and breaks free.

            Jo gave up everything—including her spare time and small joys—to look after her needy, dependent mother. Only after her mother’s eventual death does she gain some solace.

            Mandy calls herself Angel. Unimaginably wounded by the scars her mother carried from her East German upbringing, Mandy ran away from home young. Mute, stunted by a heartbreaking stutter, she squats in Berlin. At a crossroads, she meets the right cop at the right time and finally begins to heal. Angel emerges from the desperation of her life, just as the stubborn dandelion on her balcony breaks through a tiny crack in the concrete.

With a sensitive hand, Calico reveals the intertwined lives of these four remarkable women. A touching and fascinating work of commercial fiction, Dandelion Angel is a revelation of the tenacity of the human spirit as it focuses on the recovery of the daughters, rather than the abuse by their mothers.