Raspberry House Blues focuses on the issue of absent mothers and the search for them. When Poppy is left behind by her adoptive mother, she decides to leave and live with her father and his wife. Here she searches for her biological mother. The issue of absent mothers often leads children, young adults, and adults to seek them out in an attempt to discover who they are.

Poppy feels that if she finds her birth mother her life will magically change into a fairy tale. Because she is so bent on finding her real mother Poppy overlooks her relationship with her adopted mother and does not recognize the family she already has with her father and her stepmother.

Some readers may object to the idea of adopted children being able to find their birth parents. However, in the novel, Poppy is too young to initiate such...