Introduction
To err is human, to forgive divine. There is no love on earth as strong as a mother's love.
These two profound and unquestionable quotations contain respectively enough potential extrapolation for dozens of novels, and have of course been the theme of dozens of literary endeavors over the years. And yet, never have we, in all our years of publishing, ever seen them successfully combined into one truly great, memorable work of fictional art.
Until we received in our editorial offices the book you are now holding in your hands, authoress Faye Jackson's most superlative and ambitious work to date, The Passionate Mother.
This book, which we think is one of the very finest written in the past decade, succeeds masterfully in combining the two aforementioned themes into one bold, shocking, compassionate, vivid, no-holds-barred examination of life in modern America, the living, breathing entities who populate every city and small town from coast to coast. It lays bare, for you the reader, for your edification and your deep consideration, the pressures which are constantly heaped upon all of us, the temptations we are constantly falling prey to, the searching of our souls for what is right and what is wrong that all of us must do at some time in our lives. It looks at the family unit, at its disintegration and rebirth. It looks at love, and desire, and hedonistic pursuits. And it looks at the avenues of expression that a true love, the love of a mother for her son, can take when that son's happiness is threatened, and her own happiness is in doubt because of those pressures and temptations and desires which are extant in every human being.
The Passionate Mother is not a gentle book, and yet, in its honest portrayal of life in the raw, life as it really is, it is ultimately a book filled with hope for all of us, for our salvation and our happiness. It teaches the beauty of love, the goodness of forgiving the sins of our friends and loved ones, and in so doing points out the many dangers and pitfalls which await us, and which we can perhaps avoid if confronted with them.
If our praise for the authoress' new book sounds overzealous, we can offer no excuse, for we are very, very proud to have the honor to publish this truly monumental literary achievement. We think that when you read the final page of this stimulating novel, you'll agree that Miss Jackson is without a doubt one of the most brilliant social commentators of our times.
And that, like us, you will be eagerly looking forward to her next epochal study of man and woman and their place in today's society.
-The Publishers Sausalito, Calif. October 1971