When she was three months old, Michelle Herman's daughter, Grace, went on a hunger strike. At six, she suffered what can only be described, in the old-fashioned way, as a breakdown. And at the ripe old age of eight, she began a study of the nature of "true romance." Motherhood may come naturally, but it doesn't necessarily come easily-certainly not as easily as it seemed to this mother when she vowed to do a better job than her own mother had. But the real trouble started when Herman decided that "better" wasn't good enough: she would be the perfect mother. A memoir from the front lines of...