The morning air at the Bennet household was loopy with the pungent scent of fresh teenagers, especially on Mother’s Day. The girls were predictably full of themselves, looking the other way at mom and dad’s stuffy take on the annual break from real life and otherwise salivating about hottie neighbor Charles Bingley. Hormones raced from one room to the next, defining an evolution unseen at the Bennets before or since. But we’ll never know all this for sure, because Mother’s Day wouldn’t be Mother’s Day for another century or so. Besides, the household is a fictional product of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” from 1813, in which protagonist Elizabeth fights a sometimes losing battle discovering what life’s about. As Mother’s Day 2016 approaches, one La Jolla writer can relate. In fact, she’s dubbed herself the Elizabeth to Austen’s mom character, who doesn’t have a first name: “When you’re younger and read ’Pride and Prejudice,’ everybody identifies with Elizabeth. When you’re older, it’s time to identify with my Mrs. Bennet.” So says Dori Salerno, author of “Mrs. Bennet’s Sentiments: Pride and Prejudice and Perseverance,” a de facto Mother’s Day tribute to Salerno’s mom, who passed away at the age Salerno is now. The English Mrs. Bennet’s odd and ungainly foibles, a favorite target for young Elizabeth, found their way into real American life, with a youthful Salerno feeling an oat or two at mom’s expense. With the passage of time has come a new perspective, as Salerno is a mother of two herself. In a perfect world, her mom would have lived to see publication of this book “so I could say I get it… now!” Salerno is also a figure in another medium – the legitimate stage. As co-founder and artistic director of La Jolla-based Vantage Theatre, she has a boatload of experience with the written word, as her company has traversed several local spaces and has a stint in London under its belt. So how come she didn’t immortalize Mrs. Bennet onstage? “Everybody was asking me that,” Salerno said. “In a book, there’s a little more exposition and a little more of the show-and-tell balance. There’s more description and more inner thoughts of the character. No matter how good an actor you are, you can’t duplicate that. I just thought the book form made Mrs. Bennet more readable.” The fact that Mrs. Bennet already has a place in a classic novel (whose 19th-century setting is left intact here) arguably didn’t hurt. Meanwhile, Salerno said, “There’s a method to her madness,” vastly hidden under her hypochondria and inconsistent behavior and fishwifery and general boorishness. “This is a story,” Salerno explains, “of the reasons she does what she does.” To wit: In Austen’s novel, boy-crazed Lydia, 15, runs away from her Longbourn home after taking up with one Mr. Wickham, whom at first she doesn’t marry. Upon the prodigal’s return, Mrs. Bennet throws a coming-home party, which appalls the other daughters. Ma’s at it again, they sizz, replacing expected behavior with her usual eccentricity. “Of course Mrs. Bennet was ashamed of the whole thing,” Salerno said, “but in my book, she threw the party because to show she was mortified would bring shame on the family. Ridiculous thing to do, but it saved the daughter’s reputation.” And Mrs. Bennet’s unexplained aches, pains, itches, hysteria and generalized yuckiness? “Menopause,” Salerno said with a straight voice. “I enjoyed flipping that.” “This all came about,” Salerno explained, “from observing all the mothers I know, looking at all the mothers trying to do the best for their daughters and their modes of mothering.” The key component in her research? “We were all mothers of teenage daughters that roll their eyes at us.” Salerno started on the book in 2010, taking time to raise kids, mount plays and gather grist for her characters. She initially submitted the manuscript to an East Coast editor at Sourcebooks, who returned feedback on the solicitation in 24 hours and encouraged her perseverance. Salerno decided to self-publish through amazon.com’s CreateSpace, a testament to the merits of today’s technology climate. Whereas today’s mainstream publishers accept three of every 1,000 book proposals, the self-publishing phenomenon puts the writer in control as the novel trade burgeons anew. “Mrs. Bennet,” Salerno explained, “is a comic character who’s got to manage a household with five girls and take care of her husband’s man-cave. There’s a lot on her plate. But (my character) also has a certain skill that allows her to move in and out of homes in London and that kind of thing.” There’s more to Mrs. Bennet than Mrs. Bennet, Salerno says, deferring to some character-building memories. “Maybe,” Salerno concludes, “my book will help some other daughters get it.” You can find out if it will by visiting amazon.com and searching the title. The CreateSpace book number is createspace.com/6197005.