A soldier's wife : my mother, the marvelous mrs. marilyn a. underwood / Blair Underwood.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this moving biography and memoir, Blair Underwood, acclaimed star of film, stage, and television, pays homage to his mother, sharing her well-lived life, and key lessons learned as a fashion designer, mother, and soldier's wife.

Born in Buffalo, New York, Marilyn Ann Scales Underwood dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. Moving to New York City to study at the Traphagen School of Fashion, she became an assistant designer and eventually returned to her hometown where she began her career as the first Black female executive at Barmon Brothers Company. Independent and content with being single, she wasn't interested in marriage until she met Lieutenant Frank Underwood.

Blair Underwood honors his mother with this remarkable work, bringing into sharp focus her life as a soldier's wife, mother, and successful entrepreneur, drawn from his memories, her letters, and interviews with family and friends. Told thematically, and organized around essential pillars such as Wisdom, Faith, and Patience, Underwood gently peels back the layers of his mother's life and character to reveal highly, triumphant, and sometimes-scary moments told in Marilyn's warm and witty voice that connects with readers. Painting a wonderfully rich and deeply human portrait of a woman whose indelible mark is felt by all privileged to know her.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

A celebrity channels his mother's voice. Actor and director Underwood completes the book that his mother, Marilyn Underwood, was unable to finish before her death in 2020 at 84 from multiple sclerosis. Working from her writings and recordings, he and collaborator Gault have assembled what amounts to a series of nine monologues in Marilyn's voice, with titles such as "Devotion," "Leadership," and "Faith." Chatty, conversational, and revealing--at least up to a point--the monologues gradually reveal the shape of her life, from a childhood as the daughter of a single mom in Buffalo, New York, through training and a brief career in the fashion industry, to a long marriage to an Army officer, which produced four children and meant moving every couple years, and an enthusiastic commitment to Amway. She started experiencing symptoms of MS in 1975, and by the time she died, she had been in a wheelchair for two decades. The author doesn't shy away from revealing the depression the disease caused her, and hints at more than one suicide attempt, but he keeps the general tone of the book positive and light. Marilyn's strong Christian faith is a constant theme. Underwood wrote the book, he says, "to fill in the blanks of unseen women like my mother who held families and communities together for generations." The book, touching and laced through with gratitude, does that, but it also lets the reader get to know Marilyn as an individual: feisty, opinionated, deservedly proud of the life she has made, and fond of mascara and pearls--"single strand, because a little less is a lot more." Family photos add an extra dimension to the story of a woman whose seemingly ordinary life reveals unpredictable layers of experience. Fond memories of a complicated woman. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.