Sweet Apple—the very name evokes a rural charm. That’s what Celestine Sibley discovered on her initial visit to the primitive log cabin built in 1844. And that’s what she continued to find after many years living in the house, lovingly restores and filled with the memories of her own family’s life there.

“How an old abandoned house can take hold of a reasonably sane woman’s heart, fill her mind, lap up her energy and change her life is still something of a mystery to me,” Sibley muses. By the time you have savored her tale of restoring the old house, Sweet Apple’s charm will no longer be a mystery. The dilapidated ruin into which Sibley invested her heart and energy became a community project and Sibley and her family grew to love the colorful and interesting lifestyle of their neighborhood.

This is far more, however, than a story about breathing new life into an old house and moving from the city to the country. It is a story of personal discovery and fulfillment laced with wry humor and good common sense. Sibley’s vision of living and loving is so clear, so pure, that no reader can put down this book without feeling enriched. The sampling of Southern recipes that she has collected here are also certain to delight.

Celestine Sibley tells us why mothers are always special. But don’t expect to find only silver-haired saints and paragons of maternal virtue in this volume. The women (and sometimes men) Celestine writes about are honest people confronting everyday problems. They are frequently strong-willed, occasionally unorthodox, and generally free-spirited people who do the best they can with what’s at hand. And they always do it with a tremendous sustaining power of love.

In Mothers Are Always Special, you’ll meet people like Sarah McClendon Murphy, who opens her arms, her home, and her heart to hundreds of orphaned and abandoned children. You’ll meet courageous Montell Purcell, who—when told her five-year-old daughter must lose her sight or her life—waits out the doctors and their diagnoses until a miracle occurs. You’ll be introduced to Joe and Horace, an unlikely pair who correct, cajole, protect, and mother a brood of five boys after their parents’ deaths, and who do so as lovingly as any woman could. And you’ll never forget doe-like Cora Purefoy, the sixteen-year-old mountain woman who mistakenly sells her baby and then fights to get him back.

With such stories, Celestine Sibley reminds us that no matter what the age, sex, or background of the person who loves a child, Mothers Are Always Special.