Second CaroleB -- I just finished David Copperfield for the first time, which is fantastic -- you can find the complete text online, so you can read it at work...Of course, I didn't do that, I listened to the audio (just 40 hours or so). You wouldn't have to read the whole 1,000 pages, because the youth stuff is all in the first third.
On a more modern note, I liked Laurie Halse Anderson's novel Catalyst which has the backdrop of a lost mother. In fact a lot of YA novels have a missing parent. AS King's Please Ignore Vera Deitz centers on the girl narrator's loss of her best friend Charlie. Searching for Alaska is really about the same thing, with Alaska being the charasmatic love interest of the narrator. If you like lost girlfriends, then add 13 Reasons Why and Winter Girls. If you want to up the stakes to two parents, try Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (not YA, although I bet a lot of high school kids read it).
And if you prefer to just read about metaphoric loss, as represented by the inability to throw a ball from short stop to first, may I recommend Art of Fielding.