Love Letters : To My Mother

In The Book of Ruth, the love between a daughter and her mother-in-law is stronger than anything else—sustaining and all consuming. Modeled on this biblical tale, Love Letters explores author Nitza Agam’s own close relationship with her mother, Naomi.

Using a mixture of prose and poetry, Agam weaves patches of memories together to create a literary quilt depicting the two intertwined lives. She reflects on the lunches of tuna sandwiches and chocolate pudding her mother lovingly made her when Agam was a child, as well as her helplessness in the face of her mother’s incurable autoimmune disease.

The love they shared was unconditional, and it reflected something fundamental about family bonds. No matter where Agam traveled—whether to summer camp or halfway around the world—her mother always wrote her long, reflective letters.

And then the world ruptured as her mother lay dying in a hospital in California. Agam’s sense of loss was deep and searing when her mother’s death came all too soon.

Responding to those many years of letters from her mother with a love letter of her own, Agam has crafted a deeply personal, moving tribute to all mothers that will resonate with women of all ages.

Nitza Agam has been writing since childhood. Her first memoir, Scent of Jasmine, centers on the death of her fiancé in the Yom Kippur War when Agam was twenty-two years old. It is published by Lulu.

Agam conducts regular readings from this memoir around Northern California and as far away as Las Vegas. Her writing has also appeared in educational magazines, literary magazines, the San Francisco Chronicle, and in Momentum, the magazine of the National MS Society. ("The Purple Parachute.")

Agam has a BA from Hebrew University in Jerusalem as well as two master's degrees in literature from San Francisco State. She also holds a teaching credential in secondary English and has taught at various independent schools and workshops. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Ofer; together they have two adult sons, David and Orr.