Editor’s Note: Author Patti Davis, daughter of former President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy, joined wOw’s Lesley Stahl to talk about her new book, The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us, her relationship with the former First Lady and her advice for the Sasha and Malia Obama. Stahl also interviewed Patti for "CBS Sunday Morning" recently. Click here to see the clip.

LESLEY: Patti Davis, welcome to wowOwow.com.

PATTI: Thank you.

LESLEY:  As many of our readers know, Patti, you gave me an in-depth interview with your signature candor for "CBS Sunday Morning" — by the way, Patti, you looked beautiful — and I thought we could just continue our conversation here online — and we don’t even have to wear makeup.

PATTI: Cool. Because I’m not wearing any.

LESLEY: I cannot tell a lie. I’m at the office. Anyway, Patti has written a book about mothers and daughters, called The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us.

PATTI: Yes.

LESLEY: And I will confess to everybody that I was crying by page two, and not because it’s sad, but because it struck a chord, and a really deep one. So let’s start, Patti, by you telling us why you decided to write this book.

PATTI: Well, it snuck up on me actually. I was in the middle of writing a novel, which I finished at the same time that I was doing this book. The novel’s a ghost story called The Blue Hour, and I was deep into that and I found myself at my mother’s house all by myself — well, me and my dog, Gracie. My mother had left for the Ford funeral.

LESLEY: Gerald Ford’s funeral?

PATTI: Yes. And the housekeeper hadn’t arrived yet and it’s unusual to be alone in that house; I never had been. I walked through the house and it was very moving. My father died in that house, and my mother is deep into her 80s. And I knew that even when she’s gone, she’ll never be gone, because our mothers live so deep inside us. And I went home and I jotted down some things on a yellow pad, not really thinking I would do a book but that’s just what writers do. If things come to you and you know that they’re a good story, to write them down. So I wrote down some memories, impressions, and then I started just thinking about really visible, prominent, accomplished women; women in whose  presence I feel humbled. Then I thought, “Wow, you know, they’re daughters, too.” 

LESLEY: Right.

PATTI: We tend to think of people in the box of their accomplishments, but they grew up with mothers and they have had their journeys as daughters as well, and this book sort of started to form in my mind. I mentioned it to a couple of friends and they said, “Oh, you’ve got to do this book.” And I said, “I don’t want to do this book right now because I’m writing a novel. I don’t want to do this right now.” But I knew I had to, so I ended up doing both books at the same time. At around this same time, I had come upon a quote from one of Frank Bidart’s poems, which I put in the beginning of the book: “What your parents leave you is their lives.” Hence the title, The Lives Our Mothers Leave Us.

LESLEY: It’s a powerful book, and I wasn’t kidding when I said it brought me to tears by page two because of one of the things you say. It’s on page two. Here’s the quote; it’s going to show everybody what a good writer you are: “Our mothers stand behind us at the mirror, trail our footsteps, tap on our shoulders. If you burrow under the surface of any woman you will find what her mother thought about her.” 

PATTI: Yep.

LESLEY: Wow, now that is big. You’re basically saying that this is, by far, the most formative of all our relationships. Their imprint is on us forever.