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This is a story about adoption. It is about direct adoption and family adoption. It also involves keeping a secret from one of those who is adopted. It forms a family secret that defines and destroys as it gets passed along. It is the story of my mother and her sister who get cast out into the cold and are taken in by family. However, they are split up by the family and live in two separate worlds. My mother is taken to California and never told the secret. Dorothy, mom’s sister, knows she is adopted and knows she has a sister. My mother is raised as the only child of the Haughts. She knows she was born in Ohio but knows nothing else. This is the way Norden and Mabel want it to be. They would be the only ones knowing the family secret. Mabel is paranoid that someone would find out and attempt to take Zona away from them. After mother learns the truth she takes on that paranoia. She lives and breathes it and it eventually takes over her life. Everything is done to protect that secret. Yet, when I turn 17 she decides it is time to tell me “the secret” and to take me back to meet my real aunt and uncle and cousins. This is a story of how the family secret transcends time and touches many lives. It is a story of how people react differently when told the secret. My cousins David, Barbara, and Joe are amazed that I just found out about them a few months before meeting them. They have known about me all their lives. They knew who I was and where I was and what all was going on. For me, all of that was shut out. I had to ask them tons of questions to find out about them. Even when doing my final research for this book I was still asking questions to all that were still alive. I am glad I went when I did because death would take the ones who knew the answers. Imagine if I would just now be finding all of this out at the ripe old age of 60? There would now be only a handful of people left to tell me and they would only have part of the knowledge. This secret has led me on many adventures. I am glad that I know the secret but sure wish it had come about differently. But then I would not have had to write this book. So welcome to Our Family Secret, My Mother’s Lie.
'They told me he died, but I never believed them. I'd have known, ' she says, her voice little more than a whisper and her eyes searching mine. 'A mother would know if her child died, wouldn't she?' The phone call comes in the middle of the night, rousing Danni from her safe, warm bed. The police have found her mother Diana wandering along the main road, miles from her house, confused and lost. Danni races to her mother's side, but when she arrives, as always, her mother doesn't seem to care. 'Go away, Danni, ' she says. 'I don't want you.' When she was a child, Danni would lie awake at night wondering what she had done to make her mother so cold. Now she is determined to put the past behind them and make Diana as happy as she can in the time they have left. But as some of Diana's memories are slipping away, others are forcing their way to the surface. One night Diana breaks down in tears and reveals her heartbreaking secret. Years before Danni was born, there was another baby who never got to see the world. Now there is one last thing Danni can do for her mother. She will find her brother's resting place, and bring Diana some peace. But good intentions can have unexpected consequences, and soon Danni's life will be changed forever. Are some secrets best left buried? A completely heartbreaking and compelling story of families, secrets, and the fierce love between mothers and children. Fans of Amanda Prowse, Ali Mercer and Jodi Picoult will smile through their tears. See what readers are saying about Julia Roberts: 'Fantastic... Fabulously written - I just couldn't put it down and had finished it within just 2 days!... You really get to know the characters and connect with them on an emotional level... There was one moment in particular that caused a lump in my throat and, had I not been on a train surrounded by strangers, there would have been tears.' Goodreads Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Wonderful storytelling... Moments of joy, sadness and edge-of-the-seat drama... Such a great read.' Goodreads Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'Captivating from the first page... Really tugged on the heart strings and left you a little weepy.' Goodreads Reviewer
White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing is the story of Gail Lukasik’s mother’s “passing,” Gail’s struggle with the shame of her mother’s choice, and her subsequent journey of self-discovery and redemption. In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother’s decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother’s fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother’s racial lineage, tracing her family back to eighteenth-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage. With a foreword written by Kenyatta Berry, host of PBS's Genealogy Roadshow, this unique and fascinating story of coming to terms with oneself breaks down barriers.
On St David's Day 1981, Helen receives a phone call out of the blue in St Louis from her distraught father in Yorkshire, leading her to a heart-searing path of discovery.Her brother David's shocking death at only twenty years old in a remote country mansion triggers a lifelong quest to unravel truths long shrouded in secrets, buried in silence. Vividly evocative, Helen's debut memoir No Place to Lie takes the reader on an extraordinary journey through suicide, trauma and shame to shine a light on what really happened to her younger brother and the startling secret her mother took to her grave.Helen's courageous and uplifting book brings powerful messages about hope and survival, the healing power of talking, stepping towards recovery and connection to lead a life filled with humour, joy and love.
Shelby Hearon has been widely praised for the insight, wit, and subtlety with which her novels limn the complexities of marriage and family ("What Jane Austen is to courtship, Shelby Hearon is to marriage" --New York Newsday), and the ways in which place can profoundly affect us all. Now, with Ella in Bloom, Hearon gives us her sharpest, funniest, most telling novel yet. It is the story of Ella, who has always lived in the shadow of her "perfect" older sister. A gutsy single parent eking out a living for herself and her intrepid teenage daughter Birdie, Ella invents a genteel life, writing to her mother in drought-baked Texas about her heirloom roses, her linen dresses, and other amenities of a respectable life in Old Metairie, Louisiana. Little does her mother know about the run-down, scruffy house Ella really lives in, or that she makes ends meet by watering rich people's houseplants when they flee the coastal summer heat. But when Ella's beautiful sister Terrell, on the way to meet her lover, is suddenly killed in a chartered plane crash, old family patterns are shattered. And Ella, confronting the reality of her life (and of the man she had relegated to the past) comes, finally and fully, into bloom. Wise, wicked, and moving, in Shelby Hearon's hands this portrait of a woman--a woman we all know--is guaranteed to give extraordinary pleasure.
When a mysterious man claims to be her long-missing brother, a woman must confront her family’s closely guarded secrets in this “delicious hybrid of mystery, drama, and elegance” (Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author). Washington, DC, 2019: Laura Preston is a reclusive artist at odds with her older sister Beatrice as their elegant, formidable mother slowly slides into dementia. When a stranger contacts Laura claiming to be her brother who disappeared forty years earlier when the family lived in Bangkok, Laura ignores Bea’s warnings of a scam and flies to Thailand to see if it can be true. But meeting him in person leads to more questions than answers. Bangkok, 1972: Genevieve and Robert Preston live in a beautiful house behind a high wall, raising their three children with the help of a cadre of servants. In these exotic surroundings, Genevieve strives to create a semblance of the life they would have had at home in the US—ballet and riding classes for the children, impeccable dinner parties, a meticulously kept home. But in truth, Robert works for American intelligence, Genevieve finds herself drawn into a passionate affair with her husband’s boss, and their serene household is vulnerable to unseen dangers in a rapidly changing world and a country they don’t really understand. Alternating between past and present as all of the secrets are revealed, What Could Be Saved is an unforgettable novel about a family broken by loss and betrayal, and “a richly imagined page-turner that delivers twists alongside thought-provoking commentary” (Kirkus Reviews).
Inspired by a true story, My Mother’s Secret is a captivating and ultimately uplifting tale intertwining the lives of two Jewish families in hiding from the Nazis, a fleeing German soldier, and the mother and daughter who save them all. Franciszka and her daughter, Helena, are simple, ordinary people...until 1939, when the Nazis invade their homeland. Providing shelter to Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland is a death sentence, but Franciszka and Helena do exactly that. In their tiny home in Sokal, they hide a Jewish family in a loft above their pigsty, a Jewish doctor with his wife and son in a makeshift cellar under the kitchen, and a defecting German soldier in the attic—each party completely unknown to the others. For everyone to survive, Franciszka will have to outsmart her neighbors and the German commander. Told simply and succinctly from four different perspectives—all under one roof—My Mother’s Secret is a testament to the kindness, courage, and generosity of ordinary people who chose to be extraordinary.
On a hot July night on Cape Cod, at the age of 14, Brodeur became a confidante to her mother's affair with her husband's closest friend. Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help, but when the affair had calamitous consequences for everyone involved, Brodeau was driven into a precarious marriage of her own, and then into a deep depression. In her memoir she examines how the people close to us can break our hearts simply because they have access to them, and the lies we tell in order to justify the choices we make. -- adapted from jacket
Kath grew up on a vast council estate in the 1950s, the second youngest of ten children. The two most important people in young Kath's life were her charismatic but manipulative mother Flo and her mother's sister Aunty. But Flo and Aunty were keeping secrets, a tapestry of lies that cast a harrowing shadow over the children's lives. Many years later Kath's mother died and while sorting through Flo's things, Kath discovered a bundle of secret letters that sent her on a journey to finally unravel the truth... Inspirational and moving, this is the story of a women brave enough to confront her past, and strong enough to let love not bitterness define her.
“You will devour these beautifully written—and very important—tales of honesty, pain, and resilience” (Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and City of Girls) from fifteen brilliant writers who explore how what we don’t talk about with our mothers affects us, for better or for worse. As an undergraduate, Michele Filgate started writing an essay about being abused by her stepfather. It took her more than a decade to realize that she was actually trying to write about how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. This gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers. Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer’s hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn’t interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything. As Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.” There’s relief in acknowledging how what we couldn’t say for so long is a way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves. Contributions by Cathi Hanauer, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Dylan Landis, Bernice L. McFadden, Julianna Baggott, Lynn Steger Strong, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, André Aciman, Sari Botton, Nayomi Munaweera, Brandon Taylor, and Leslie Jamison.