The title of Laura Pulfer's new book might persuade you to buy it as a Mother's Day gift. Don't, if you're expecting the same old sentimentalism often associated with this holiday. But do, if you (and your mother) are looking for a quick, uplifting read based on the belief “that a good story is often a story about good.”

BOOK REVIEW

Mothers & Other Heroes   By Laura Pulfer     Orange Frazer Press   $14.95; 152 pages

        Although the book is called Mothers & Other Heroes, it's the “other heroes” that dominate. The dedication, to Pulfer's husband and her mother, sets the tone: “Every good thing I have done in my life,” she writes of her mother, “is because I looked first into her eyes and saw that I could.”

        The book, a collection of columns published in the Enquirer, allows us to meet inspiring men and women whose eyes we can't look into directly but whose lives speak of the possibilities of goodness.

        People like Ms. Pulfer's mother, “the utterly ruthless mom” of the first selection. After reading about her, I'd call her “utterly lovable” — especially if I were her granddaughter, who must be the envy of friends. Ms. Pulfer writes:

Pulfer

        “My mother taught my daughter how to paint her fingernails when she was 4 and how to drive when she was 13. They roller-skated and jumped rope together. My mother gave Meg her cheesecake recipe and taught her how to use it. She pierced my daughter's ears and sent her encouraging notes when I had grounded her "for life.'”

        Some of Ms. Pulfer's good people have made history, nationally or locally, including Albert Sabin, the developer of the polio vaccine, “the Patron Saint of Mothers” or former Cincinnati City Council member Bobbie Sterne, whose “bravery is habitual and longstanding.”

        But most of the book is peopled with lesser-known heroes — breast cancer survivors running for a cure, or teen-agers who stop their car to aid a girl lying on the roadside, or the staff at St. Joseph Home in Sharonville, who bring “some relief from the real world” and allow Ms. Pulfer's readers to engage in “wishful thinking.”

        Profiles like the one on St. Joseph's, a home for children and young adults with “profound mental and physical disabilities,” show Ms. Pulfer at her best. In her strongest pieces, she slips out of her office and slips into the lives of people like us, skillfully combining narration and description to draw us into the hearts of her subjects.

        Ms. Pulfer lets us see the miracles of these children in wheelchairs, heads locked in place, during music class:

        “The teacher beats a drum.

        "You like that, don't you, Mimi?'

        No response.

        Wishful thinking.

        Then I notice Joey's tongue — his tongue — is moving in time with the music.

        The teacher puts her hands over his, and together they make music on the drum. His eyes snap open. They lock with mine. And he gives me an achingly beautiful smile.”

        Such passages allow me to forgive a weakness of the book: inclusion of columns that stray far from the title and intent of the collection, columns on neckties and pantyhose, restaurant freebies, and laws aimed at “nitwits.”

        Regular readers of Ms. Pulfer's columns, like me, will reconnect with local heroes they've become attached to. As for readers unfamiliar with Ms. Pulfer's columns, well, they will meet new people and find inspiration.

        My mother, who lived out of town until her death in December, would not have recognized Ms. Pulfer's byline, but she would have recognized these “mothers and other heroes.” So would anyone who likes a good story and has time to listen to a few, which Ms. Pulfer says, “are the stories I tell myself when I'm having a bad day.”

        Elizabeth Bookser Barkley, Ph.D., is the mother of three teen-age daughters. She teaches literature and writing at the College of Mount St. Joseph and is author of Loving the Everyday: Meditations for Moms and Woman to Woman: Seeing God in Daily Life (both from St. Anthony Messenger Press).

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