Could I have a finer compliment?

I spoke with my mother yesterday.  She's a wonderful, Christ-like woman (I hesitate to use the word "Christian" anymore; so many folks, not the least of which are politicians, have tainted it's meaning) who has always been a praying person.
She's finished reading Broken Road.  Said she found herself praying for the main characters before she realized what she was doing.
Don't know if I'll ever have a better review.

Do I Have the Write to Call Myself a Writer?

I am way out of my comfort zone. My former writing "career" was limited to one-page, emotional outpourings for family occasions, often years apart, until April 2010. That was when my husband, Mike, finally convinced me to begin writing down the thoughts for a story, born of a single idea, which had been rolling around in my brain for at least eight years. 
We spent hours discussing where to take that single idea and, although now I can't remember exactly when, finally fashioned it into its current incarnation. Its first life took form in a short story my youngest daughter wrote for a college writing project. Seven years later, Mike constructed the framework of the first four chapters and, not long after that, the characters told the story. Broken Road was written...and revised...and revised...and revised...². (That's "squared,” not a footnote.) 
The characters in Broken Road are almost literally like my children. They woke me in the wee, small hours of many mornings, often brought me to tears, and letting them go into the big, wide world is scary.

Listen to Your Mother

Writing Broken Road was a multi-faceted experience unlike any other I’ve ever known.  One of the most significant elements about it was how vulnerable I felt going into it, and even more so once the characters were well fleshed-out and had become my dear friends.  

At this point in my life, my self-protectiveness is a well-honed skill, so sharing the fact that I was writing a novel, much less the novel itself, was difficult and a pretty well-kept secret, except for a small number of people that Mike and I—well, Mike asked—to read it for advice on writing style and content.

I didn’t tell my parents or my siblings until the book was published.  I sent my parents a copy and my mother began reading it.  She’s a former school teacher and the very first person who taught me grammar, most noticeably correcting me when I would use “me” when “I” was the correct form. 

Less than a week after sending them Broken Road, Mike went to visit my folks for Christmas.  My younger sister was also at their apartment and there was a bit of discussion about the writing.  I mentioned that Mike and me (just kidding) had spent twenty minutes lightly arguing over a comma, and that I had won that argument.  Mother then said she had found a couple of places where the grammar was incorrect, but that didn’t bother me; I knew about several instances where that was the case, but it was written that way for a reason. 

Then she dropped the bombed.  She had noticed an error-not grammatical-but an error so huge it’s embarrassing, not only for my mistake, but because Mike and/or I (see; I do know what’s correct) have gone through this story no less than thirteen times and caught mistakes every stinking time, and we still missed this glaring gaffe.

I will not tell you what it is; won’t even hint at it.  It’s too humiliating, and if you’ve read the book and didn’t catch it, so much the better.

But, if I write another book, you can be damn sure my mother will be one of the first to read it!