Heart and Soul: Learning to Communicate Through Thick and Thin

There are many ways to impart knowledge about relationships, especially between parent and child. There are self-help books and radio talk shows, even arenas filled to the rafters with believers (or those wishing to believe). Muriel Kennedy has drawn on her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology to create an exceptionally creative motif in which relationships are explored. The result is Heart and Soul: Learning to Communicate Through Thick and Thin, in which readers are introduced to young Jamaal and witness the boy's poignant interactions with his mother and the world around him. By following Jamaal, we also come to terms with our own emotions and the complexity of relationships. In this, the first of a three-part series, Jamaal is viewed with all his adolescent trappings as he struggles with his mother and the anger he harbors toward her. Through his journey-and, in a sense, the journey of his mother-Jamaal (and the reader) learns about faith and hope, love and forgiveness. The author poses the question "What is loving discipline" and then answers it thoroughly, honestly, and so clearly that any parent will see herself in the text and take heart from each essential parable.