"I wish I could be just like you," Bethany Saltman’s pre-school daughter said to her one day. The chuffed mother asked her why. The reply came like a blow: "Because then I could be angry all the time." Saltman had tried so hard to be a good mother, having felt scarred by her own mother’s coldness. It was only as she began to devote herself to studying attachment theory and the work of the developmental psychologist Mary Ainsworth that she realised love didn’t have to be hard work. The story of Ainsworth’s career and findings are given great urgency by Saltman’s own struggle with motherhood and reinforced by the insights yielded by her Zen practice. A decade’s worth of research informs this engaging exploration of how humans learn to delight in each other and in life itself.

–Fiona Capp

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