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Grace Virtue has written a book she hopes will give a voice for people just like her — everyday, average folks.

"I think that is the story of a lot of women's lives, perhaps the vast majority," she says.

The long-time Silver Spring resident's "How Will I Know My Children When I Get to Heaven? A Mother's Tales of Hope" is a collection of personal essays about universal topics. Much of the book consists of extended answers to tough questions her daughters have asked the single mother who raised them.

Each chapter, says the first-time author, challenges an assumption. She tackles such topics as parenting, politics, ethics, education and identity.

Virtue grew up in Jamaica, where she worked as a journalist. She came to the United States to do graduate work at Howard University, earning a doctorate in mass communications in 2001. She expected to move back to Jamaica, but learned she was overqualified for her former job. Instead, she opted to take a job in Washington, D.C., and stayed here with her two young daughters, now ages 17 and 18.

In one essay, Virtue recalls her younger daughter's query about homelessness.

"Eh, Mommy? Eh Mommy? How does someone end up homeless and lonely like that?"

"My heart smiled, fleetingly, ironically. For, right then, I could have told her that I was one tiny little paycheck away from homelessness myself. That I lived on the edge of a deep, dark fear that one slight, unexpected twist of fate and I could be right there — on a busy street corner, my children and my worldly goods at my feet, unnoticed by old, jaded passersby. Instead, I paused and searched deeper for answers to questions that were about more than a single old man on the grassy edge of a busy suburban street."

Virtue's answers are candid and deeply considered when referring to such difficult issues as abortion, religion, healthy weight control, marriage, divorce, sexually transmitted diseases and discipline.

"I think I have to give them all sides," she explains.

She sees her job as to educate rather than to dictate.

"I'm never asking them to agree with me," she says.

Virtue began collecting stories about interactions with her daughters in 1997 as a way to preserve memories. It wasn't until 2005, however, that she really began writing in earnest.

Some stories are more lighthearted, like when her older daughter asked about the morality of eating meat.

"How would you like it if someone killed you, plucked your feathers and stuffed you in a blazing hot oven?'

"It was a typical Sunday in our house. My aim was to cook a perfectly roasted chicken to go along with the inevitable rice and read beans; Alya's was to get me to abandon the project. Her concern for the members of the animal kingdom which began early in her life, was fermenting into a deep, well-thought out philosophy of non-violence against man and beast. She figured her campaign should begin in her own house, even though my chickens came to it already dead and frozen."

Virtue was comfortable with openly discussing topics often reserved for private, even whispered, conversations.

"They're very sticky issues and I think that's the value of it," she says.

Virtue now works as senior writer and executive communications manager for Howard University, but continues to plug away on new book projects. She has written a second book, this about contemporary mass media in a Caribbean context, and is putting the finishing touches on a novel.

When she began the journey of motherhood, Virtue thought of herself as the teacher and her children as the students.

"I wasn't thinking they had so much to teach me," she says.

What she learned is the importance of listening to youngsters and allowing them to form their own opinions about the big issues. Just because children have small bodies does not mean they have small minds, she says.

"Their humanity is no less than my own."

"How Will I Know My Children When I Get to Heaven? A Mother's Tales of Hope" is available for purchase at www.amazon.com.